Meet Me on the Other Side
by Mystic25
Summary: Damon Salvatore was dragged for a project he thought had been dismantled 50 years ago, a project that catches not just Stefan's attention as he tried to find him, but also the attention of Hunters. Vampire Diaries/Supernatural Crossover.
1. Chapter 1

"Meet Me on the Other Side"

Mystic25

Summary: Damon Salvatore was dragged for a project he thought had been dismantled 50 years ago, a project that catches not just Stefan's attention as he tried to find him, but also the attention of Hunters. Vampire Diaries/Supernatural Crossover.

Rating: M for blood, language, and violence

Disclaimer: Neither "Supernatural" nor "The Vampire Diaries" are owned by me, all their representations and characters belong to their respective people. I'm playing with them; I'm woman enough to admit it.

A/N: Okay, so this started out as a soley TVD fic, then the little cogs in my brain wouldn't stop turning, and it's now the Vampire Diaries/Supernatural crossover I've been dying for. Hope I did it justice.

This was written before both shows had their season finales, right after "Dead Man's Campus" for TVD and "Road Trip" for Supernatural. So it will be AU city.

A/N #2: I recommend a working knowledge of both shows if you wish to read this. And lastly, sorry for abandoning you guys for so long, I was working on _this. _ Six months of my blood and sweat. Enjoy, and here's a rag…

**xxxxxXxxxx**

**CHAPTER ONE**

"_The true nature of evil is that it is so very casual."_

James St. James

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Damon felt his hand along the stone wall in the groves made by his own scratching done way back in the 1950's. It smelled just as it did then, and he hurt just as much as he did then too.

Repeatedly being dragged out of his cell by a at least five other vampires all hopped up on the blood of Augustine, the Big Bad that never showed his face. Just liked to watch the torture covered in shadow like it was just a puppet show like the kind Damon used to watch with Stefan at the local fair when they were kids.

For some reason the memory of puppets and Stefan made Damon smirk in amusement. It was probably due to all the blood loss being shot out of his system and replaced with Augustine's blood, it gave him a head rush he hadn't felt since he went postal on a small town back in the 1940's.

His number was scratched in the wall above his initials: '_DS 210151.' _The initials for the name 'Salvatore' scratched in the cell was such a clash of modernism and old world it felt like two things fighting for existence in the same plane.

The last time he was here he had taken to scratching tick marks in the stone to mark the days, then he discovered the tick marks were too numerous to mark every day individually, so he began marking the ticks in weeks, then months. Then the months started becoming too numerous so he started marking time years, 5 of them to be exact, all lined up like soldiers, nice and neat, marking his imprisonment.

It wasn't all torture, he was allowed a day of recuperation, scant amounts of blood to keep him alive, they couldn't have their subjects dying before the completion of their research. But it wasn't Club Med either. So far he'd been here five days this time, five for tick marks added to the stone. His daylight ring had been snatched on the first day, and the halogen bulbs that lit the place it made it almost as painful as the sun. Which was a great tactic to prevent the Vampires from escaping this hole if Damon wasn't one of the ones having it used on.

The door opened with a squeak, turning his eyes away from the scratchings he placed above the old ones.

Two Vampires dressed in expensive looking leather stared at him, each brandishing a heavy iron chain.

"Let me guess," Damon's voice had long since slurred, the last round of bloodletting was a _bitch_, half his volume gone to be replaced by the Augustine blood. "Kinky dance off?"

The leather clad Vampire on the right didn't seem to find this amusing and lashed out the chain until it wound its way three times around Damon's neck like a choke collar on a dog. He squeezed the chain hard, until the vertebra in Damon's neck snapped and he dropped. The vampire dragged him out of his cell down the dark dirt filled hallway that smelled like old blood.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

It had gotten better, ever since Katherine had talked him down in Mystic Grill, Stefan felt more in control. The visions had stopped being all consuming, and had started to feel more like chronic pain after a traumatic injury. The daily drowning had stopped.

But then five days ago Elena had come through the door in a frenzy of hysteria. Damon had disappeared from the Dr. Maxfield's lab after Jessie had been killed by Elena when Jesse tried to attack Damon. Caroline and the others had gone to bury Jessie's body and hadn't seen Damon leave Whitmore Campus. At first Stefan chalked it up to Damon doing something outside of the box, he wasn't exactly shy of such things, especially since they now had cannibalistic vampires on their hands. But Elena had called Damon numerous times, only to be met with nothing but voicemail requests. Stefan had tried to call only to be met with the same response as Elena, until the second day that he tried and was met with a 'this line is no longer in service' recording, and the first pebble of 'wrongness' in it started to drop in Stefan's brain. Even if Damon was avoiding everyone for a solo scouting mission, including Elena, which Stefan found unlikely as his brother professing his love for Klaus, Damon wouldn't remove the service from his phone.

Elena called Caroline, and Bonnie, freaked out and worried, and planning had happened, and Elena had taken a leave off from school to search for him, and Caroline had agreed to help because Elena was her friend. All three girls now claimed residency in the Salvatore house, absent off all but one Salvatore now.

And just like that Stefan's visions had returned, only this time the visions had been hijacked into a whole other territory. The safe walls would blur and morph into something more like stone, an odd assortment of scratching like fingernails on the surface.

"_Stefan?"_

Stefan jerked, eyes jerking open with him, nearly falling off the narrow surface he was on. It took a moment of disorientation to remember why he was on the sofa, he'd given Caroline and Bonnie the use his bed even though there were six other bedrooms in the house. Stefan did it in part to be cavalier; but more so because he barely _slept_ anymore.

"Stefan?"

Caroline's face hovered in with platnium blonde curls, "Hey," her hazel brown eyes a myriad of worry. "Are you okay?"

Stefan took stock of the parlor, the fire still lit in the fireplace, the blanket trailing on the ground like a snake, one that he hadn't gone to sleep in, so one of the girl's must have thrown it over him in the night.

"Yeah," Stefan's answer was so automatic he had to process if it was correct in his mind after he'd said it. He picked up the blanket, wrapping it end over end like a muff and dropped the bundle beside him.

He looked over at the grandfather clock. "It's three in the morning," Stefan turned to the blonde in a white silk robe opened to a sheer night gown underneath "why are you up?"

"Why are you?" Caroline asked right back. "I could hear your breathing and thrashing all the way upstairs_,"_ She sat back in a black leather cushioned chair, with deep scratch marks on the arms. "I wanted to make sure you were alright."

"I'm okay," he reassured her, "I just had a really weird dream," Caroline's concerned look didn't disparate after his words. "Look it's late, we called it a night because no one was really functioning anymore, so why don't you go back to bed?" Stefan had started to take on a protective roll with Elena, Bonnie, and Caroline ever since they had come to stay with him last week. He tried to keep everyone reigned in, including himself.

"It's been nearly a _week_ Stefan and we haven't heard anything!" Caroline insisted. "I'm not the biggest fan of Damon, but you didn't see what Jessie looked like when he attacked me! If Damon has been with whoever did that to Jessie, then I don't see how he's not some vampire eating psychopath or de-" Caroline stopped like she had slammed on the brakes of a car seconds before it reached the cliff.

She closed her mouth like she could suck those words back in. "Stefan," Caroline stood up from the chair sat and on one of the arms' of the sofa. "I'm so sorry, I didn't mean it," She took his hands and squeezed them, his bulky daylight ring pressing into the underside of her fingers. "Damon and I have bad history, but he's your _brother_-we'll get him back."

"Caroline it's okay," Stefan grasped one of her wrists. "You have every right to feel the way you do about Damon. But I also know in spite of how you feel you're going to help bring him back, and that counts more than the hate."

Caroline looked like she wanted to swallow a fish, not knowing what to say, but knowing that Stefan was right.

"Ugh, look if you two _want_ to be all flirty and playful can you do it upstairs? People are trying to sleep."

The snark that had gone in Damon's absence had reemerged in the form of a female. One in a gray jersey shirt that was too short to hide a pair of long toned legs because the woman who wore them wore _only_ the shirt and obviously noticeable black lace lingerie.

Katherine descended the stairs slowly in bare feet and wet hair, Caroline shot her a death glare with each foot fall. Despite all that Caroline had learned about Katherine lately, the Vampire still could push her buttons. "Remind me why we didn't just throw you out on the street to beg for scraps?"

"Because Stefan invited me," Katherine put more of a saunter in her step as she said Stefan's name. "History has a way of repeating itself, doesn't it Mr. Salvatore?" She drew out Stefan's last name in the lazy Georgia Accent she had used when she had first stepped out of the carriage back in 1864. She plucked at the shirt she was wearing, a jersey for the New Jersey Devils hockey team. "Thanks for the shirt by the way," she inhaled the fabric deeply and came up with a lecherous smile. "Smells just like you." She dropped beside Stefan on the couch, drawing her legs up under her body.

Stefan shifted away from where Katherine planted herself, watching her run a hand through her damp curls to work out the snags. "You know, giving you a place to sleep for a night doesn't entitle you to steal my clothes."

"You never used to complain," Katherine deadpanned, shooting him a coy look, then glanced over at Caroline who looked both affronted and disgusted. "I'm sorry Caroline," she cocked her head to the woman she had turned into a Vampire. "Does it bother you that Stefan and I used to get under each other's clothes before your great grandparents were even alive?"

"Okay, _eww!-_" Caroline stood up from the sofa, and hurled a throw pillow at Katherine's face. She stood up as Katherine dropped the pillow with an audible '_ow'. _Ever since she had downed the Cure and became human, Katherine complained about it every moment that she got. "You're human now, so _I'm _going to go back upstairs before do something irreversible like rip your throat out." Caroline turned in the shadow of the fire, stomping out of the parlor in bare feet.

Katherine adapted an innocent look in her face. "Someone's a little testy."

"I didn't let you stay in this house so you could insult everyone in it." Stefan informed to now-human Katherine. He'd known her as a Vampire for 145 having her, _not_ like that – it was like seeing a porcelain cat come to life.

"Which begs the question, _why did you_ let me stay here tonight?" Katherine turned to Stefan, dark eyes on him in the light of fire. "It's not like I'm not a Silas bargaining tool, or any other kind of poker chip for Mystic Fall's latest supernatural problem anymore."

"You tried to jump off of a building a few nights ago, you mindset isn't exactly stable." Stefan returned. "And after you helped me I figured I owed you from destroying yourself."

"So this is all just a tit for tat?" Katherine drew a knee up to her chest, exposing more of her bare legs. "It has nothing to do with repressed feelings emerging in that extremely chiseled chest of yours after you saved me from my intended fate?"

Stefan blew out a dry kind of laugh, looking down, then up at Katherine. "You know me better than that Katherine."

"And yet I _still _can't figure out what you're currently thinking," Katherine insisted, dropping her feet into his lap one at a time in a slow maneuver. "I may be withering away to a husk, but I'm not senile yet, so stop being a tease Stefan, and enlighten me."

Stefan gritted his teeth, staring at this woman who had been the bane of his very long existence, and answered her honestly. "Out of everyone in Mystic Falls, you're the only one who knows Damon almost as well as I do and I need you to help me find him."

Katherine assessed Stefan like she used to do with every potential meal source she had looked over back in her Vampire heyday. "See, that wasn't so hard was it?" she leaned over, her damp curls falling forward to frame her face. "The second phase for PTSD recovery Stefan is to admit to your emotions as they're being felt, otherwise they fester and bubble like a raging infection and explode into a nasty mess."

Stefan pushed Katherine out of his personal space and stood up, leaving her legs to fall onto the sofa cushions.

"Where are you going?" Katherine followed him up with her dark eyes.

"Your attempt at psychoanalysis isn't exactly a calming affect for sleep," Stefan answered her. "I'm going to grab a shower."

"Do you need some help?" Katherine's voice was slow and syrupy sounding, her eyes roamed over parts of him her photographic memory could recall in amazing detail. "Or Elena's upstairs in Damon's room if you prefer your women in the broken _Vampire _variety."

Stefan didn't buy into her baiting, he picked up the discarded blanket and dropped it over her exposed legs. "Goodnight Katherine." He turned and walked out of the room, and up the stairs, leaving Katherine Pierce to watch him in his wake.

**xxxxXxxxx**

8:00 AM

The Next Day

Elena walked down the stairs to the sight of Katherine dressed for the day in all black, winding a thick green silk scarf around her neck. "Where are you going?"

"Out to find food," Katherine worked the scarf around her like she'd never handled that particular accessory before. She unwound it, shook it out, and threw it once loosely around her neck, tying it into one giant knot. "The bad thing about staying in a house of all Vampires, is the lack of anything kind of sustenance except for blood and bourbon."

"I can make you something to eat," Elena said, not believing that she was saying this to her doppelganger double who had made her life a living hell for years because she could. But ever since Katherine had become human, there was something, almost _pathetic_ about her. "Jeremy has a stash of stuff in the cabinets in the kitchen."

"Yeah no offense, but I'm not eating the stale Doritos and Pepsi Next your little brother calls breakfast, I need something else besides cardboard poison."

"Fine," Elena returned watching Katherine add a cream colored pea coat over top of her outfit. "Hey, are thosemy _clothes?"_

"In case you haven't noticed Elena, its _45 degrees_ outside, not exactly ideal weather for those of us who don't have Vampire endurance against the elements anymore," Katherine cinched the coat's sash around her waist. "I can borrow Stefan's shirts to sleep in, but he's a little too tall for the outerwear." Before Elena could even comment on the double entendre remark Katherine came back with: "Or I could just try and find something in _Damon's _closet."

Elena felt like Katherine had stabbed her with a fistful of jagged glass, she stepped towards her doppelgänger. "You know you could at least _act_ like you care about what happened to Damon!"

Katherine glared murderously at her over smoky painted eyelids. "Let's get one thing straight, just because I'm not weeping in Damon's volleyball team sized bed every night, doesn't mean I don't care. Not everyone enjoys being a martyr for the cause as much as you do."

The sound of footsteps on the stairs turned both women up towards the sight of Stefan descending the stairs dressed in jeans and a black hooded pullover.

"Just as Stefan," Katherine said, watching Stefan walk down each step.

Stefan reached the bottom of the stairs. "Ask Stefan what?"

"Elena will fill you in," Katherine used that as her parting words and walked out the front door with a hard click of black ankle boots.

Stefan turned to Elena. "What was that about?"

"Nothing," Elena brushed it off like Katherine hadn't affected her as much as she really had.

Stefan didn't buy it. Just because he wasn't dating her anymore didn't mean he still couldn't read her. "Look I know that you two don't exactly have the best history, but given all that she went through, she deserves a little slack."

Elena wanted to argue, for just a moment, despite everything that Katherine had gone through recently (what Stefan had recanted to Elena anyway): downing the Cure, aging, finding her daughter after 500 years, she still couldn't loosen the anger she had for the woman. But she forced it today, because it was Stefan who was asking. True they weren't dating anymore, but he was still her friend and she cared about him.

"You're right, I'm sorry." she sighed to block out the other things she wanted to say, and changed the subject. "How'd you sleep?"

"Uh, I didn't," Stefan admitted, dry laughing. "Bad dreams."

Elena's face fell at that proclamation. "I thought Katherine was supposed to be helping you deal with the flashbacks." She said the last part like she was trying to chew a piece of barbed wire.

"She is," Stefan returned. "But it's a process, I had control over them for a while, but after Damon disappeared, they got more intense, different- I'm seeing things I don't know how I'm able to see-"

"Stefan," Elena reached out and grabbed his wrist, what he said didn't make any sense, but she couldn't miss the scratched, broken sound in the undercurrent of Stefan's voice. "We're going to find him, I have to believe that, and so do you-" She reached out her other hand to brush the side of his face.

"Hey, sorry." the sound of Bonnie's voice turned Stefan and Elena towards the little used kitchen doorway. "I know it's still early, but Caroline went a little OCD and made breakfast." She thumbed her finger back towards the room behind her.

"Yeah sure," Stefan answered for him and Elena and they both walked past the staircase, made a left and stepped down the split level to the large kitchen that no one ever used. The appliances dated back to the 1950's, when the house was used as a Boys Home. The walls were eggshell white mosaic tiles, a butcher block island sat in the middle of the floor next to a five burner gas range. Next to an open window that over looked the back lawn was a long unpainted wooden farm house type of table covered in multiple plates of scrambled eggs, bacon, buttered toast, melon balls, and a little mini cooler that Stefan guessed was full of blood bags.

"Hey you two," Caroline commanded. She was dressed in a low cut pink V-neck sweater and jeans, pouring coffee into two glass Irish coffee mugs which she held out to Stefan and Elena a moment later. "Sit down, I _know_ it's early and most of us are Vampires, but supplement with blood and choke the rest down anyway. I went to the market for something to do because just sitting around doing nothing was driving me _crazy_-"

"No Caroline," Elena interrupted, taking the coffee from her, "This looks great, better than the bagel bites in the mini fridge in our dorm room."

"She's right Care," Bonnie agreed to her friend, Caroline was a bit eccentric, but she had good intentions behind everything she did. She took a seat on the long wooden bench seat. "It looks amazing."

Caroline smiled, grateful that her gesture was received so well. "Where's Katherine?" Caroline choked on the name.

"She went out foraging for scraps," Elena took a seat beside Bonnie, drinking from the coffee mug Caroline had just handed to her.

Caroline looked offended for just a second before her expression became more of relief; she fixed her gaze on Stefan, "I know she's your new Zen Master Stefan, but I'm glad she's not here; ever since she became human she's been on one long whinny rant."

"Hey, what's all this?" Jeremy emerged from a side door into the kitchen dressed in black basketball shorts and a gray hoodie. He walked over to the table and surveyed the all the food.

"Caroline made breakfast," Bonnie said, turning up to look at him, and added in a quieter voice: "Just eat it and smile."

"Are you kidding?" Jeremey leant over her and snatched a piece of bacon from a serving plate. "I'm not going to turn down eating something that isn't stale and hermetically sealed." He leant down more and stole a kiss from Bonnie. "Hey."

"Hey," Bonnie returned the kiss, but pressed her lips together at the end of it because she was sitting next to Elena. "Sorry."

"Bonnie it's fine," Elena insisted, she had given her 'blessing' a while ago, and she was genuinely happy that they were together. "It's actually pretty amazing." Her smile made Bonnie smile.

"_Defiantly,"_ Caroline agreed, spearing a melon ball with a copper fork. "At least one of us deserves a functional relationship-" her words were a laugh, but ended abruptly. "I'm sorry," Her fork hit the plate with a clatter. "Elena, I didn't mean anything by it-"

"Don't worry about it," Elena returned, but her words sounded a bit forced. "I know you didn't, just like the last time at Whitmore, you didn't mean anything by that either-"

"Alright, hey," Stefan cut into their conversation before it could escalate. "Now's not the time for this okay? Things are tense enough without you two turning on each other." His words were more forced than Elena's. With Damon gone, and with the exception of Katherine, he was the oldest out of all of them. It wasn't a position that he wanted, he'd never been the oldest _anything_ concerning Damon. It was like when was ten and had tried on Damon's first riding jacket that didn't fit him by a good extra yard of fabric when he thought he'd been tall enough to wear it.

Caroline looked like she wanted to say something else, but her face fell away at the look on Stefan's face, and the look on Elena's. Despite how she had major issues with Elena dating Damon, it didn't mean she wished Damon any serious harm. "You're right Stefan," She turned to Elena." I'm sorry-"

A knock on the door turned Elena away from the remark she would have said and the coffee she pretended that she was drinking to fill the crushing silence in the absence of Damon's sarcasm. The knock in itself was strange because most people tended to use the bell pull or just walked in.

"I'll get it," she stood up, setting her coffee cup down on the table.

The entryway to the boarding house was long and massive, arched in solid birch wood overlaid in cement, like the apse of a church.

Elena pulled the stained wooden door open slowly, to a woman in a gray uniform, Caroline's mother.

"Sherriff Forbes," Elena addressed Liz Forbes formally, partly because she was her best friend's mother that she's known since birth, but more so because Liz Forbes wasn't alone. Standing beside her were two tall, _very_ tall men dressed in dark suits. Elena took in the sight of the way the men carried themselves, officially, both had serious set eyes and equally serious stares radiated from them. She looked to Liz. "What's going on?"

"Elena," Liz Forbes addressed her just as formally, glancing at the two men beside her like she wasn't sure what they might do. "Is Stefan here?"

"Yeah he's inside," Elena gestured back towards the kitchen where Stefan had emerged partway, knowing full well that he was listening in on what they were saying. "Is there something wrong?"

Liz hadn't addressed either of the two men the entire time she had been standing there, but she now did it in her sideways glance at them. "These gentlemen are with the FBI, they have some questions for him- about his missing brother."

Elena's gaze suddenly widened, feeling like someone had dropped a rock on her foot.


	2. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO**

"_They were once people, so you won't know it's a vampire until it's too late."_

-"John Winchester"

"Supernatural" Episode: "Dead Man's Blood"

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Route 40 (South East towards Virginia)

Six Hours Earlier

The roads were nearly empty for three am, nearly empty because a few cars had tried hard to knock the black Chevy Impala off the road because of their poor judgment in driving. Twice Dean had heard the squeak of tires, and twice he had resorted to screaming profanities and thrusting inappropriate hand gestures out the driver's side window.

"Damn student drivers blowing off AA," Dean muttered to himself and an otherwise silent car. In the passenger seat next to him, Sam stared forward at the whizzing scenery of trees that hugged the horizon gone pink at the edges from the impending morning.

Dean glanced over at Sam, who didn't remove his eyes from the road, feeling the silence in the car like a brick that was pressing harder and harder into his spine. "Sam-"

"What do you want me to say Dean?" Sam rounded on Dean with that, his anger evident in every conceivable way, but his hurt evident even more.

"I don't know," Dean returned clipped. "_something."_ He didn't want to sound this way. But ever since Sam had cast out Gadreel, Dean had found less and less of _any_ kind of emotion towards him from Sam; It was like Sam had simply given up.

"I just _did."_ Sam snapped each word like a rubber band. Each movement of his temples sent a pain to his head from where the nails had been drilled into his skull by Crowley. Cas had healed him, but he still felt a lingering pain, like chronic wounds had settled over his entire body.

Dean sighed, heavy and tired. "Look man, everything that you're wanting to say to me, why don't you just say it?" A blur of tree line zipped by the car.

"How about we _not_ make this about you?" Sam snapped. His words were frozen cold, not flippant, or even angry, just raw and hurt.

"This isn't about me Sam," Dean was hurt too, and tired and hating himself for being suckered into breaking his brother, in more ways than one. "This is about working the job-"

"A job that I got _dragged_ into, Dean! You dredged up some loose leaf report asked me to work a last case with you-"

"And you _came_ Sam," Dean cut him off, swinging a look over at Sam, the lingering effects of just what his deal with Gadreel had cost them buried in his brother's gaze. "I didn't tie you down this time, or _trick_ you. I _asked_ you to do this with me, and you agreed. This is about _you!_" Dean breathed a sigh that seemed to age him ten years. "Look man I get it, you re pissed, and you have every reason to be. I'm not going to try and spin it any other way-after this case is done you can go your separate way, and I'll go mine. After everything I just put you through I owe you that much."

It felt like someone had stuck hot knives into Dean's gut, but he managed to get all those words out. Sam's gaze shifted to something that stabbed Dean even more. Agreement.

"Okay," Dean used his 'smile because you have to voice', cleared his throat, and turned away from Sam to focus again on the road. "Case looked like a doozy kinda thing of our kinda thing."

Sam blew out a retort he wanted to give Dean, a yell, a desire to punch him in the face, to get out as soon as the car stopped and never look back. But, as much as he hated Dean right now, he was here, and he would keep his word, because he had enough of lies and deceptions for a lifetime. He opened up the manila folder that was in his lap, collections of various articles and police reports. "Mysterious disappearances of 20 men ranging from ages 18 to mid-thirties all within in a five state area in the last month. The live body count is high, but how is this our kind of thing?"

"Maybe the part about one of the most recent vics being reported missing by his parents two weeks ago, then he shows up at a college keggar party with a piece of wood jammed medieval style in his back." Dean looked over at Sam in the blur of the headlights.

"Okay," Sam relented at the extra piece of information, shielding himself from any kind of personal inflection with his brother, but letting the "business side" of his voice seep into his words: "It's our kind of thing, but why couldn't it wait until business hours?"

"Couldn't sleep," Dean returned like that it explained it. "Figured I might as well be productive," when Dean saw that Sam wasn't buying it he made a sigh like he was swallowing. "Ever since I burned Kevin's bones-" Dean stopped there, and swallowed what he couldn't say.

Sam stared at him with a tight jaw, but didn't comment.

Dean cleared his throat: "According to the police report the dead vic attended college in Virginia, place called Whitmore, he was knee deep in body jello shots when he was ganked, but everyone at the party seemed to have amnesia-"

"A room full of witnesses, and no one saw anything." Sam said it like it didn't make any sense, catching on to Dean's trail.

"Exactly," Dean returned. "Figured we go interview the campus coeds and see if anyone changes their stories."

Sam unearthed a smaller report from the pile. It was short, only a handful of lines, one that he had missed because he thought it was just a disclaimer about the police website. He tilted his head as he read it. "You might not have to do that."

Dean glanced over at him. "Why's that?" He heard the professional tone in Sam's words, and had responded in kind, much as he hated it.

"It says here that all the vics had state wide APB's put out on them, some even_ federal_, regular nine for missing person's –all except one_,_ the most recent,a man named Damon Salvatore-"

"_Salvatore?"_ Dean repeated the name like he was had just tasted a snootily named bad tasting cheese. "What is that, like fake Italian nobility?" The cracking of a joke hit the air like a loose pebble that couldn't find its place in the riverbed and was left to float away alone.

"The point is," Sam reigned Dean in. Sam tried to stay professional and detached, but after 9 years of Hunting with his brother, their banter would never remain truly professional. Only this time, Sam would use it as a means to an end, one that would help him finish his last case with Dean. "The ABP for this guy is only local, put out a week ago by the sheriff department of a town called Mystic Falls – which is only two hours away from Whitmore. I think it's a bigger lead then interviewing hung over 20 somethings who may or may not have seen anything."

"See this is why you only lasted a year at Stanford," Dean returned to Sam, watching Sam cut him a look before he could mask it. Despite the fact that Sam looked like he wanted to punch him in the face every moment he saw him now, Dean _knew_ his brother. "Okay, we'll swing by and have a chat with the sheriff of Mayberry Virginia, and if no leads pan out then we go back to school."

Sam didn't say anything in return.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Unknown Location

4 Hours Ago

Damon blinked back to consciousness, and instantly regretted it when the bulbs overhead burned his eyes, he felt his skin sizzle like bacon on a frying pan. He tried to move his arms, and found them bound to his side by heavy iron rings soldered into the table.

"Comfortable?"

A voice from came his right from a smug looking face of the smug as hell professor Wes Maxfield. Wes stepped over to the table Damon was currently shackled down to.

Wes wore a lab coat, all pristine white, which meant that he had changed it since the last time Damon saw him because Damon clearly remembered spitting half of a blood bag in his face.

The professor glanced upwards to the lights embedded in the ceiling that glowed hotly bright. "We made some modifications with the lighting; Grow Bulbs, farmers use them in green houses, they mimic sunlight, they're not enough to kill you," he reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled something bulky and silver from it. "But still enough to hurt like hell without one of these."

"Sarcasm is my department," Damon said to the face he dreamt about ripping off its neck every night since he'd been here. The rings at his wrists were tight, cutting off circulation to his arms, but it was nothing compared to the one at his neck, it felt like when he was wearing a high collared shirt like he used to wear, only with about 50 pounds of starch added to it. "You just stick to being the evil and masochistic dick." He smiled despite the fact that it hurt, along with his muscles, and skin, and eyes, and hair.

The professor shrugged into a smile. "I like you, Damon."

"You have no idea how warm and fuzzy that just made me." Damon threw back.

" The Augustine's likes you too," Wes glanced back behind him, Damon wasn't exactly able to move, but he remembered from before that the exam rooms had a double sided mirror where the Augustine's, the group of doctors, scientists, and socialites who were into macabre, would watch the experiments like it was a side freak show at a carnival. Now there was no one there but Wes, and the shadowed man who Damon felt watching him as Wes cut him open.

"You would've been one of the best," Wes stared Damon down. "Had you not escaped before the experiment was completed."

"What can I say?" Damon was still trying to be sarcastic even though his skin felt like it had been deep fried. "Post war sexually frustrated women were more of an enticement then stone cells, vivisection, and crappy room service- And the next time the Augustine troop of psychopaths wants to give me a gold star, tell their asses to say so to my face instead of bringing in the hired help."

Wes' smile vanished. He lifted his hand and held out a syringe filled with a yellow colored liquid. "I never got to thank you earlier for making me your personal lab rat," The contents of the syringe looked as thick as maple syrup. "Typhus was a big epidemic back when you were human-" he flicked away the bubbles in the syringe. "Vampires have amazing healing abilities, but diseases this strong are resilient little things. Let's see happens shall we?" He grasped Damon's forearm, pulling the skin back while Damon struggled, his bicep taught but unable to break out of the binds before the needle was plunged into his arm, contents drawn into his vein.

The reaction was fast, the bacteria latching on and multiplying much faster in Damon's Vampire blood. A dark redness began to bloom like a bruise on his chest, spreading outwards, his muscles started seizing, squeezing inward like he was desiccating.

Wes watched this all, pulling a handheld recorder out of his pocket: "Vampire subject #210151 extremely reactive to Rickettsia Typhi bacteria, onset of symptoms nearly instantaneous."

Damon fingers curled into claw-like formations, his back arched off the table, his vision began to cloud, an overpowering sense of heat rushed at him. The pain was so blinding that his fangs detracted involuntarily with his next scream, tearing through the flesh of his tongue and filling his mouth with blood.

Wes hung a full blood bag on an IV pole by the exam table Damon was strapped down to.

"Go to hell!" Damon ground out, his limbs spasmed so hard it looked like he was having a grand mal seizure, blood leaked out of his mouth.

Wes pierced Damon's forearm with the catheter in the same place he had given him the injection in. "Don't worry, the symptoms should subside once the infusion is complete," He opened the roller clamp on the IV tubing all the way, the blood snaked its way down the tubing and into Damon's arm. "Much as I'd like to _kill _you Damon, I'm not about to waste a perfectly viable candidate for the Augustine Project," He leaned over Damon like he was a family physician assessing a patient in his office. "I'll be back to see how this all works out."

He vanished from Damon's sight, towards the blacked out double mirror as the pain Damon felt reached its apex.

**xxxxXxxxx**

Mystic Falls, Virginia

Two Hours Ago

The town was one of those that was an in-between, not so small one could drive through it looking for the gas station and pass the entire town in the process, but not so large that it was in reality a city that just didn't want to claim itself as such.

It was a place of sprawling trees and bricked buildings and a cute town center with a gazebo and _more_ bricked buildings, including a bar named: _Mystic Grill, _where a single red pickup truck was parked. A blonde teen emerged from the truck and went in a side door with a set of keys. Beside the truck was a black and tan sherriff cruiser.

Dean pulled the Impala into the empty space beside the cruiser in the parking lot that was just a giant black square of asphalt. He emerged from the car sliding on a black suit jacket while on the other side, Sam adjusted a red tie around his neck a bit uncomfortably.

Dean glanced up to the building with the sign proclaiming it to be: "Mystic Grill", in neon letters that were turned off to the morning light. "I'm not knocking getting blotto before 9 am, but any reason the Sherriff wanted to meet up in a _bar_ instead of the _Sherriff Department?"_

Sam had left a message with the sheriff department of Mystic Falls an hour ago wanting to discuss the bulletin she had issued, but it was early, he wasn't expecting anyone to call back, and was surprised as hell when someone _had. _

"She just gave me the address," Sam answered, fiddling with the knot on his tie, it was right now in a bit of a strangulation mode because after crossing into town they had received the call from the Sherriff who asked them to meet her. And Sam and Dean had struggled into suits in the car in a very, very uncomfortable fashion. "Didn't say where it was, but she sounded a little anxious on the phone."

"Yeah well conducting official law enforcement meetings in a bar will do that to someone," Dean responded.

They were in the back of the building with a set of concrete stairs and a ramp leading up to a service door. Both took the stairs and opened it to a darkened room almost completely made of wood, a bar sat on the left side of the room, fully stocked with colorful liquor bottles. Tables with overturned chairs resting on them sat in groups around the vast room, silent televisions were mounted in various positions along the walls.

"There something I can help you with?"

The voice turned them around to an area just beside the bar, the blonde teen they had seen earlier stood there a white rag slung over his dark blue shirt scrawled with the name of the establishment on it. "We don't open until 11:00 guys."

"We're not here for the lunch specials kid," Dean removed his fake FBI ID badge and held it up. "We're here to talk to the Sherriff, she called and told us to meet her here."

"Why?" the teen asked, an almost hostile, protective note to his voice, even at the sight of the FBI badges. "Is something going on?"

"It's okay Matt," a female voice proclaimed, a woman emerged from the shadows with blonde hair styled in a pixie cut and a brown sheriff's uniform and jacket, a radio strapped to her right shoulder, and a gun holster around her waist. She looked at both Sam then Dean as if sizing them up, then held out her hand. "Liz Forbes, I'm the sheriff of Mystic Falls."

Sam took the woman's hand, "Agent Miller, I spoke with you on the phone, this is my partner Agent Ryson."

"Sheriff," Dean shook the woman's hand, "Listen no, disrespect, but is there any reason we're doing this here instead of down at your office?"

"It's a small town Agent," Liz Forbes answered. "People talk, I wanted to keep things low key until we are able to fully grasp what we're dealing with," she paused, then addressed both of them in an authoritative voice: "My APB was local gentlemen, I don't see understand how it came across to your office."

"The FBI talks too sheriff," Sam responded. "We're investigating similar disappearances in three other states, so when we came across your missing person's report on Damon Salvatore-"

"_What?"_ Matt interrupted the Sherriff. "You put out an APB on _Da-"_

"Matt, would you mind giving us a minute?" the sheriff looked over at Matt, a silent exchange happened between both of them, the sheriff finally winning the battle and Matt grabbed a box of empty liquor bottles that had been stacked by the bar and disappeared with them.

"He your son?" Dean questioned, still feeling the intensity of the kid's gaze even after he had gone.

Liz Forbes shook her head. "He's a friend of my daughter's; I'm sorry for his behavior, he's just a little upset. Damon is well known in this town, his family was one of the original founders back when Mystic Falls was settled in the 1800's."

"So he was well liked?"

Dean's question made Liz Forbes pause for just enough of a moment for him to judge her answer before it even came out of her mouth, but before she could answer Sam spoke:

"He means was there any reason to suspect that anyone would harbor a grudge towards him?"

Again there was just the slightest hesitation in the sheriff's posture, but even with that her answer came quicker than before: "Damon had flaws like any of us, but he was just visiting his girlfriend at college he went missing."

"Did anyone see anything?" Sam asked.

"There was a dorm party going on, too much noise and drinking for anyone to notice much of anything." Liz Forbes responded.

"Wait, what college does the girlfriend attend?" Dean asked.

"Whitmore," Sheriff Forbes responded. "About 90 miles from here, her and my daughter are roommates."

"And they didn't see anything either?" Sam asked.

"Like I said it was loud." Liz responded. "They didn't notice anything until afterwards."

"Sheriff I don't know if you know this but there was a kid killed there the same night Damon Salvatore went missing." Sam said. "Jessie Turner, was there any connection between the two?"

Forbes shook her head, but Sam had been studying people long enough to notice the shift in her body language that betrayed more than she was willing to admit out loud. "My daughter knew him from her classes, but Jessie and Damon never met, they weren't even on the same area of campus that night."

"What about the security cameras?" Sam asked.

"Camera's aren't allowed in college dorm rooms because of privacy, there's only an exterior shot of Damon entering the building, but none of him leaving. Campus police found his car in the parking lot, when they searched the area where he was last seen they found signs of a struggle, glass shattered, blood everywhere."

"No offense, but that sounds like more than a _local_ problem Sheriff, especially with one kid already dead and another person missing in the same night." Dean insisted. "Why didn't you at least alert state police?"

"Like I said it's a small town," Liz said by way of an answer. "I wanted to keep things as tight knit with Whitmore campus security as I could, I didn't want to freak out his friends and family until I knew more about the situation-"

"Wouldn't his family want to know if he went missing?" Dean asked.

"Damon's parents died years ago, it's just him and his brother now," Sheriff Forbes said, not unfeelingly. "You can understand why I wanted to keep things as low key as possible."

"We understand," Sam responded, the Sheriff didn't know _how much_ he understood what that feeling was like.

"Did you question the brother about what happened?" Dean asked.

"He wasn't there that night," Forbes responded back quickly, like she had a script for such things presented when FBI agents asked about people under the care of her jurisdiction. "He was invited to the party, but Damon said he wasn't feeling well so he stayed home."

Sam picked up on the key piece of information. "You spoke to Damon Salvatore before he disappeared?"

"_Right _before, but nothing seemed different," the sheriff responded.

"Would you mind if we spoke to Damon's brother?" Dean asked her. "There might have been something that he knows that he didn't tell anyone else, you know the whole family confidant thing?"

Both Sam and Dean watched Sheriff Forbes expression shift like a Chameleon, crossing from refusal, to suspicion, to finally agreement, all in the span of three seconds. "Of course, they live in the old Boarding House just past Miller Lane – why don't I escort you up there? This town has a lot of old dead end roads, it's easy to get lost if you don't know where you're going."

"That'd be great, thanks." Sam responded.

The Sheriff smiled, something that didn't look forced, but didn't look natural.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

The road the Impala traveled on was mostly packed dirt, and the dust kicked up by the tires coated the car's black body in a dark brown film. Trees were thick on either side of them, most of their leaves were dried or had fallen off from the winter that was still had a grasp on the landscape.

"Is it just me or does the Sheriff seem a little too jumpy about letting us up to this place alone?" Dean asked as he kept pace with Sheriff Forbes' cruiser. Despite what she had said, the route to the residence of Damon Salvatore was fairly straight forward, just one single road of dirt.

"It defiantly feels like she's hiding something," Sam agreed.

"It _absolutely_ feels like she's hiding something," Dean interjected. "All that back pedaling about this guy, Salvatore, how she's this big important sheriff, and she neglected to put out an APB wider than her own town for someone she claims everyone knows so well."

"You're probably right- about the brother knowing something that no one else does."

"That's usually the way it goes," Dean agreed. "Hell, you and I told things to each to each other dad never knew about all the time. Like that time you blasted a hole in the front tire with that flaming dragon Fourth of July in 93?" Dean returned with a bit of a smug smile.

Sam turned to him, "That was _you_." Even mad as hell, Sam could still deliver the line.

Dean's smile faded away, he continued to drive.

The road curved to the right and the forest gave way to a massive three story house topped with a deeply slanted dark gray shingled roof and ringed by a paved portico drive. Two cars, a red Mini Cooper and a silver Ford Fusion sat parked at the end of the drive, next to a tall set of beach trees whose branches that extended upwards to the level of a wide, grant front porch ringed in wooden colonnades.

Sam looked out the window in disbelief at the sprawling _mansion_ in front of him. "Yeah, I can see how we'd get lost finding this place without an escort."

Dean shook his head him in silent agreement, "Small towns and their secrets man, I tell ya." Dean glanced up through the thick iron mullioned windows, a small amount of light filtered out through soft white curtains. He followed Sheriff Forbes cruiser around the drive and parked beside it as the Sheriff was exiting the vehicle.

The Impala doors closed with a '_squeak' _as Sam and Dean exited, Sherriff Forbes waiting for them beside her cruiser.

"You were right about finding this place Sheriff," Dean drove the particular point home about the gaping holes in the sheriff's story. "It's a maze."

"A lot of these roads used to be riding paths before they were paved," Sheriff Forbes answered like she was actually believing her story stuck. "Some of the town members still use them for horse travel, so some of them aren't safe for cars if you don't know the tricks." She stopped talking abruptly, like she had run out of things to say on this particular topic. "If you don't mind I'd like to go in when you question Damon's brother, no offense to the FBI, but I've known most of these kids since they learned to crawl and I'd like to keep the traumatic questioning to a minimum."

"Fine by us," Sam agreed before Dean could try another less than subtle remark about the Sheriff's less than subtle subtlety. "We just want to find out what happened."

The sheriff nodded her head, extending her arm to the house. "Gentlemen."

All three of them ascended the steps leading up to a massive dark stained front door. An old fashioned bell pull sat to the right of the door, but the sheriff neglected it and knocked hard on the solid wood door.

It took a few moments for the door to be opened, revealing a beautiful young woman with long, lightly curled dark brown hair and brown eyes in a blue mini dress that was way too cold for the weather outside. "Sheriff Forbes," the brunette studied the sheriff, sculpted brows lowering when she noticed Sam and Dean. "What's going on?"

"Elena," Sheriff Forbes addressed the girl by her first name. "Is Stefan here?"

"Yeah, he's inside," The girl's brows furrowed even more. "Is there something wrong?"

The Sheriff glanced over at Sam, then Dean. "These gentlemen are with the FBI, they have some questions for him – about his missing brother."

'Elena's' face went wide for a moment, eyes in total confusion, but then she mastered it. "Come in."

"Thanks," Sam responded, walking into the massive elongated foyer that spilled out into an even more massive parlor filled with Persian rugs and dark leather furniture.

As Sam passed Elena, he couldn't help looking at her again. She was a stunning girl, but it wasn't for that reason, he kept getting a weird sensation when he saw her face, like something just on the tip of his tongue that he couldn't say. Elena watched him watching her as she shut the door.

"Agent Miller, Agent Ryson," The Sheriff addressed Sam and Dean by their fake names, "This is Elena Gilbert, she's a friend of my daughter's-"

"The girlfriend?" Dean piped up.

Elena Gilbert had a way of cocking her head that was like a puppy trying to understand a new sound. "I'm sorry?"

"The Sheriff here just explained that you and Damon Salvatore are, friends with benefits." Dean went on.

"Yeah-" Elena did her head cock thing again to Dean, and he had to remind himself that this girl was like 18. "He's my boyfriend," she cut herself off and looked towards Sheriff Forbes. "Did you find anything out about Damon, about what happened?" the concern in her voice was evident.

"Elena-"

A male voice and a set of heavy boot steps echoed off the wooden floor, and Elena turned around with a swivel of long thick brown hair to the sight of a guy standing at the split level that divided the entryway from the foyer. He was tall and lean with a muscular build, he looked about the same age as the girl.

He stepped down from the landing, and came to the foyer, a pure glass coffee cup in his hand, watching Sam and Dean with a gaze like he was as used to scrutinizing people as they were. "What's going on?"

"Stefan," Sheriff Forbes addressed the teen gesturing at Sam and Dean with a backwards flip of her arm. "These men are from the FBI, they'd like to ask you a few questions about Damon's disappearance, if you're up for it."

'Stefan' seemed to take in what Liz Forbes said like he was slowly digesting some complex conversation. Elena kept her eyes on him, like she was waiting for his reaction.

Stefan backed away, "Come in."

"Thanks," Sam responded, though technically they were _already_ in.

The kid turned, leading them into a room too large to be a living room, the world 'parlor' came to Sam's mind as Stefan Salvatore led them to one of the two floral printed sofas that faced each other beside a grand elaborately carved marble fireplace that was almost five feet high. A fire was lit, cracking behind the gold fire grate flooding the room with its warmth. Elena Gilbert and Sheriff Forbes each took the right side of the fireplace near where Stefan Salvatore was standing.

Dean took in the dark solid wood furniture, the tapestries on the walls, the coat of arms above the fireplace, the large painted portraits on the walls, many of them yellowed from age. "Nice place."

"It used to be a boarding house for orphan boys," Stefan said, "before that it was used as a hospital during the First World War, before _that_ it was a summer retreat for the aristocracy of the town."

"You know a lot about history," Sam commented.

"It's, a _passion_ of mine," Stefan commented back. "Damon and I, we go back generations in Mystic Falls."

"Listen, I'm sorry about your brother," Dean cut in. "I know how rough it can be when stuff like this happens to family," he tried to rein in the side long look he gave Sam, but most of the look still came out anyway. "Is there anything you know about what happened at that party at Whitmore that we don't?"

"I wasn't there," Stefan replied, almost curtly.

"We know," Sam returned. "Sheriff Forbes filled us in on the details, but we were hoping if there's anything you can recall about the last few days you saw your brother that seemed _different_."

Stefan visibly shrugged. "Not really," he looked like he would almost manage a laugh if the circumstances had been different. "But nothing about Damon is typical."

"Has he tried to contact you since he went missing?" Sam kept his questions banal so he wouldn't trigger any red flags with the sheriff or with any of the others. Though there was an intensity in both the younger adults' gazes, especially Stefan's that seemed mechanized, like the gears of a clock working, answering what was asked of him, but processing things at a much deeper understanding.

"No," Stefan responded. "That's what made me think something was wrong, my brother and I aren't always on the best of terms, but he would've returned my calls," there was a pause in which Stefan shifted his gaze from Sam and Dean to Sheriff Forbes. "I'm sorry, I wasn't even aware that there was a missing persons report _on_ Damon-"

"I filed it last week," Liz Forbes cut in, a tenseness to her voice.

"Why didn't you tell us?" Elena Gilbert returned to the sheriff. "Or let one of _us_ do it-"

"Missing persons can only be reported by a family member or law enforcement Elena – Since Stefan hasn't been well enough to do it I filled it myself, the sooner it's out there, the better our chance of finding him-"

"Have there been any leads?" Dean asked, cutting off the small town local rant. By now all three members of Mystic Falls looked ready to murder each other. And they weren't being as subtle at it as Dean suspected they were trying to be. Either that or having done this job for this damn had long fine-tuned his senses of reading people to a mastery.

"No," Sheriff Forbes responded. "Not yet," her eyes flicked over from Sam and Dean to Stefan and Elena as she talked.

"Look Liz, I appreciate what you're trying to do-" Stefan said, his voice was polite enough, but there was a bite to it that slowly leached it of all its propriety. "But next time you need to check with _me_ before you involve the FBI about Damon-"

"She didn't _involve_ us kid," Dean returned, watching Stefan Salvatore's gaze turn, just for a moment, at the word: _kid. _"The APB came out across our feed, and we were just following up, so why don't you cut the sheriff some slack?"

"It's alright Agent," Sheriff Forbes returned. "Things are just a little tense-"

The audible sound of glass shattering echoed through the room, causing Sherriff Forbes to jump back in an ingrained law enforcement stance. "Whoa, Stefan, hey!-" Sheriff Forbes raised her hands and stared at Stefan's own hand that was now coated in a stain of coffee and glass fragments from the cup that he had just shattered.

Elena ran to a side table drawer beside one of the sofas and grabbed a dustinh rag, drawing it around Stefan's hand which began to leak a fair amount of blood, and saying: "make a fist" in a low tone.

Sam cocked his head at the sight of how heavily Stefan's hand was bleeding, but how he seemed not to notice it. "Hey, you okay?"

"I'm sorry guys," Stefan looked to both Sam and Dean, the winding off cloth hanging loosely in his fist "But we're going to have to cut this short, see yourselves out-" Stefan pushed forward to a staircase that led up to a second level balcony, droplets of blood staining the rosewood floors in his wake. Elena watched him leave, flustered, but followed after him in a few steps calling his name.

"I'm sorry Agents," Sheriff Forbes apologized.

Dean watched Stefan until he disappeared from sight. "What's wrong with him?"

"_It was an accident."_

The answer came from a platinum blonde in dark jeans, a pink sweater and heeled boots. She stood at the entranceway to what looked like a kitchen.

"This is my daughter, Caroline," Sheriff Forbes said of the blonde who stepped across from the kitchen, her heels clicking she walked. "Honey these men are with the FBI, they're investigating Damon's disappearance."

Caroline Forbes smiled like it was an introduction, but then Dean saw it wane at the mention of the acronym '_FBI' _

"What kind of accident?" Dean questioned the blonde.

Caroline stepped up from a split level from the kitchen behind her. "Stefan was run off the road a few months ago by a truck; his car was thrown into the quarry and he almost drowned. The memories still bother him."

Sam digested the information. Now that the new facts were presented to him he was able to recognize the symptoms of PTSD, something after 9 years' worth of a hunter's life he was painfully familiar with, especially very recently. "I'm sorry, we didn't know."

"Look we don't mean to stress your friend out," Dean added, "But you have to understand - these types of cases, they have a tendency die out on leads or worse, go south. So if there's anything you're not telling us, now would be the time to speak up."

Neither the sheriff nor her daughter said anything, like it was a mutual agreement they made about what was said when strangers entered into their lives. "Look," Dean reached into his jacket pocket and removed a white business card with his fake FBI credentials. "I'll leave my card," he held it out to the blonde girl. "If you or your friends come across anything noteworthy you give us a call."

Caroline Forbes took the card and studied it with the same scrutiny someone would use in checking the authenticity of a historical document, responding only with a nod of her head.

Sam felt the tension thicken in the room like a rolling fog. After basically living in a cesspool of tension for the past five days the feeling of it was as familiar to him as sunlight. "We'll see ourselves out okay?" He turned and walked out of the parlor, up over the first level and back to the front door, Dean right behind him.

The heavy wood shut behind them with an ancient sound and they stepped down the narrow cement stairs.

"Remember the 'absolutely hiding something' remark I made earlier?" Dean was the first to reach the long drive that led up to the massive porch. "Well swap the 'absolutely' for 'not subtly _at all'_, and add three exclamation points."

Sam looked at Dean in silent agreement "The sheriff's pretty much waving a red flag that she's trying to keep Damon Salvatore's disappearance within her inner circle."

"Try dancing a meringue around a smoke signal with strobe lights," Dean returned. "And what was with Damon Salvatore's kid brother going all Sopranos on her?" Dean rounded the curve the drive made and walked to the driver's side of the Impala. "He looked like he was about to pencil her neck."

"It fits with the friend's story though," Sam rounded the Chevy to the passenger side, resting his arms on the car's, elaborating more when Dean gave him a 'go on' look. "Those are all _classic_ symptoms of PTSD."

"Brought on by what?" Dean questioned. "Cause I'm not buying the whole 'car accident' thing the just-friends-friend was selling. You don't break a damn glass with your bare hand because of a little whiplash, something else is going on-"

"You think he knows more about what happened to his brother?"

"Enough to lie to us about it," Dean responded.

"Then our next move should be to head back into town, see if we can find that guy 'Matt' still hanging around the bar. He didn't exactly seem happy about Sheriff Forbes APB on Damon." Sam returned.

"Alright, that'll be _your_ next move," Dean agreed. "_My_ next will be to hit a motel shower," he sniffed his suit like he had rolled in something fowl. "That house was sweating bourbon."

Sam didn't comment, and Dean missed the return comeback like a missed breath. "What?"

"This is _your_ case Dean," Sam practically spat the words at him. "You need to do your own legwork, or is doing something that doesn't benefit you too hard now?"

"Enough with the low blows, Sam. You don't have to spell out that you're pissed off at me every time you open your mouth." Dean retorted, watching Sam close his mouth like a landed guppy. "And you don't want to do the legwork, _I'll_ do it, after all it is _my case_-"

"I'll talk to the kid," Sam returned, gritting his teeth at the end of the sentence "Just don't expect any more favors after this."

"After the bacon burger you're picking up for me, I won't expect a damn thing – don't give me that look, Sam." Dean half heard what he was saying; he and Sam sounded like an old married couple on the verge of a nasty divorce. "You're going out to a place with food you're _bringing back _food, okay?"

"Fine," Sam returned, opening the passenger side door with an audible creak.

Dean opened the driver's side door with the same sounding creak. He was about to get in the car when an odd creeping sensation thumbed the back of his neck, like something was watching him. He turned back to the sprawling multi-story house, and at first saw nothing, but glancing higher up he caught sight of a face half in shadow looking at him from what looked like an attic window. From that high up it was hard to see her completely, but it was defiantly the girl who had answered the door.

Sam saw Dean still standing by the driver's side door. He stopped midway from getting in the car and tracked Dean's gaze up to the face of Elena Gilbert watching them through sheer curtains at the window three stories up. Sam raised his hand and waved, and his theory that she was trying not to be seen was proven right when she backed away for an instant like she'd been startled, but then seemed to master herself and waved back, dropping the curtain back in its place.

Dean looked back down three stories and over to Sam, sensing the perplexed look underneath Sam's anger. "What?"

"Nothing," Sam said at first, but then he answered honestly because Dean was still watching him. "That girl just looks familiar-"

"_Familiar?" _ Dean returned. "When were you ever in _Mystic Falls_ Virginia to have Deja vu?"

"I wasn't," Sam responded. "There's just something about her-"

"There are a _lot_ of somethings about her Sam," Dean said in appreciation.

"She's _18_ Dean-"

"That's legal in all 48 states Sam," Dean returned.

Sam's exasperated look came out; he climbed inside the passenger side of the car.

Dean basked in the brief moment that something between him and Sam seemed slightly normal before he finally climbed in on the driver's side and started the engine.


	3. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE**

"_Don't piss off the diabolical ones."_

~"Katherine Pierce"

"Vampire Diaries" Episode: "Monster Ball"

**xxxxXxxxx**

Elena watched the as black car pulled out from behind her Mini Cooper and headed back down the drive to the road. She had tried listening in on the two men's conversation, but with how high up in the attic she was, the fact that the two agents were standing close together and speaking in low voices, and that her attention was split in two places she was only able to pick up snatches of what they said. Completely irrelevant things about finding a place to stay, and a few choice things about her.

She turned when she heard the sound of water running in the bathroom. She walked away from the window to Stefan's large on suite bathroom. She found him standing over the marbled vanity, hand in the stream of the faucet which turned the water bright red. As more of the blood was cleaned off she saw that the wound was long, with a shine from the pieces of jagged glass that were still in his palm. And that it was taking too long to heal, especially for a vampire.

"Hey," Elena grabbed a cream colored hand towel from off a brass ring next to the sink, reaching into the vanity's drawer for a pair of pliers she had found in there once before. "Let me help you-"

Stefan heard Elena's voice like he was running through a tunnel, the water that poured over his hand in the sink sounded like rain sliding off a distant roof. Then the water started to poor inwards, into cracks of a murky darkness.

"Stefan?"

He felt himself drown for just a moment, the pain exploded into whiteness, then he was in a room, he saw shapes tied down. One of them was Damon, he was looking down at Damon, but the images was blurry.

**[**_"What did you do to me?" Damon's green eyes were stained in blood and agony._**]**

"Stefan-" Elena set a hand on Stefan's shoulder, and his reaction was like she had torn off his daylight rind and thrust him into a flood of sunlight.

He jerked back with a choke of a sound, his injured hand shot out and wrapped around her neck.

"Stefan!" Elena choked out a Morse code gasp of his name at the pressure on her carotid artery, she felt the glass from his palm poking through the flesh of her neck. "You're not drowning, you're here, please!-you're hurting me!-"

Stefan released her neck and Elena fell back with a hacking cough, she gripped at the soreness around her throat, looking up to him and saw that he looked worse than she felt.

"Elena-" The pressure he had used on her throat had pushed the glass fragments more into his skin, dripping blood down his palm like reaching octopus tentacles. He stared at his hand like it was a knife that had just slashed someone's throat.

"No-" Elena ducked down to pick up the towel she had dropped on the floor, drops of Stefan's blood dripped down the vanity and onto the cloth in small patters.

"I'm sorry-" the look on Stefan's face was guilt, horror and pain swirled together like his emotions had been run through a blender, along with the rest of him.

"No Stefan it's okay," Elena wrapped his hand tightly in the towel, trying to stem the bleeding.

"I keep seeing these _things,"_ Stefan's voice was heavy, almost lost. "I can't turn it off-"

"It's okay," Elena repeated in a whispered reassurance, reaching out with her free hand to grab the pliers off the vanity. She released her grip on his hand and the towel spilled open like a blooming carnation that had been plucked from a vase of blood. She pulled out a shard of glass the size of her thumb from his skin, dropping it in the sink. "It's going to be okay, alright?"

"Elena, I saw Damon."

The pliers stilled above his hand as Elena turned her gaze up to him, startled. "What?"

"It's not just the drowning anymore," Stefan said as she pulled a glass shard only slightly smaller than the previous one next to the life line his palm, blood oozed out along the crease. "I keep seeing snatches of things, a room, these _lights,_ Damon's there and-" Stefan made no noise earlier while Elena removed the glass fragments, but as she reached for the last visible piece, he winced audibly.

"Stefan you went through so much pain in that safe, and now with Damon-" Elena set the bloody pliers in the sink and turned the water. "You haven't been sleeping, you're always on edge-" she rewrapped the towel around his hand like a makeshift bandage.

"I'm fine," Stefan insisted.

"Stefan you're not_ fine_-"

Stefan waved her off with an angry jerk of his head, turning his eyes back to her. "Why is this so hard for you to believe? You had a bad feeling about me all summer when I was missing, but I can't experience the same phenomena? Do you even _want_ to find, Damon?"

"How could you even _ask _that?" Elena defended "Of course I do! I love Damon too, but I'm worried about you, Stefan!-" Elena gripped both sides of his face with the flat of her palms, his dried blood ringed under her fingernails. "I can't save him and lose you in the process."

The look in Stefan's eyes showed all of his 162 years. "Then you have to trust me. He's my brother, Elena. I'll save him even if I have to loose myself in the process."

Elena's face fell into a sadness. She loved Damon very much. But standing here with Stefan, her love for Damon and his love for Damon was like trying to compare a droplet of water to an entire ocean. She placed a hand over his bloody one. "We'll find him."

Stefan didn't blink as he watched her do this. The wound on his hand had finally stopped bleeding and started to heal itself. He unwrapped his hand and dropped the bloody towel on top of everything else bloody in the sink, pushing past Elena to exit the bathroom.

She watched him for a second before following him out through his bedroom and down the three flights of stairs. As they descended the steps they started to pick up Liz and Caroline's voices arguing against each other, the sound reaching its apex when they hit the first floor landing.

"-you should've _told_ us mom are you that _stupid!_" Caroline stood only inches away from her mom, her voice hostile.

"Caroline!" Bonnie exclaimed, trying to reign her friend in.

"I didn't have a choice!" Liz argued back to her daughter.

"What's going on?" Elena reached the ground floor a second after Stefan did. She looked to Liz, then Caroline. But Liz was the one who spoke.

"The security cameras at Whitmore had an exterior shot of Damon entering the building the night that other Vampire attacked him-" Liz could see Caroline was fighting back a '_his name is Jessie'_ that she wanted to say, because Caroline had already yelled it enough Liz was sure everyone in town had heard her. "By the time I found out about it, it had already been seen by Campus Security, I had to do damage control-"

"One of us could have gone up there and compelled them into giving us back the tape mom!" Caroline snapped, almost sounding like the bratty kid she had been before, had the situation not been as serious as it was.

"Wes put the entire campus staff on vervain," Liz said to her daughter. "One of my deputies found a huge supply in the college kitchens, there was no way any of you could've taken it from them by force. I had to do what I could to minimize the attention-"

"Yeah except your minimization attracted the attention of the FBI," Stefan said to Liz, the hostility clearly evident in his voice.

Liz Forbes turned to Stefan, feeling his anger like it was a living thing. The stories about the anger of Damon Salvatore were legend, but Stefan was not immune to such emotions, especially when it concerned the people that he cared about. "The APB on Damon was local Stefan, I made it small on purpose so it would look like we were doing our job without gaining too much of a spotlight, there was noway it should've crossed FBI jurisdiction."

"Then how did they find out about it?" Bonnie asked confused.

"That's what I want to know," Liz said, "I'd like Caroline to stay here longer," this remark was directed at Stefan as well. "I don't want her staying alone so long as those FBI agents are in town."

"Mom I can handle myself, and I've got _classes_!" Caroline argued, getting madder than she should have, but the entire last week of Stefan coming back home damaged, losing Jessie, Damon going missing, it was all starting to boil over.

"She's right Caroline," Stefan insisted, despite his anger from earlier, he knew that the sheriff was just looking out for her daughter. "It's better if you're here with us, safety in numbers applies to vampires as well as humans."

"Thank you," Liz said to Stefan with a nod. "Caroline said she heard them talking about finding a room in town, I'm going to meet up with them again, see what else they know, I'm not about to expose all of you to a federal witch hunt." There was a time when Liz Forbes was part of the Council of Mystic Falls created solely for the purpose of hunting down and exterminating Vampires, but she had since realized that even concerning the supernatural, not everything was as black and white as people wanted to believe.

"I'll check in with you tonight okay?" Liz set a hand on Caroline's shoulder, then hugged her. "Be careful-" Liz addressed the remark to all of them. With the acceptation of Stefan she had known all of the other kids since they were born, and had grown extremely protective of them.

"You too, okay?" Caroline said to her mom, watching her give her one last look before she left.

"_Seriously!" _Caroline said once her mom was out of earshot. "This is _crazy_!" "I can't just _sit _here while the FBI in town, and that psycho psychics professor who killed Jesse is busy running around free!" she looked to each of her friends in turn. "I say we follow my mom, and make those guys leave!"

"Caroline, that's too dangerous," Bonnie argued. "If you try and attack outsiders in broad daylight, you risk exposing all of you."

"I'm not talking about eating them like Damon, Bon!" Caroline argued right back. "There are three vampires here, and only two of them, all we have to do is compel them to get the hell out of town and I didn't mean the Damon remark," Caroline said the last part all in one breath, looking over to Stefan. "I'm sorry-"

"It's alright Caroline," Stefan reassured his friend. "But I think it's better if I check them out alone first-"

"_What?"_ Elena returned. "No, Stefan, you're still not okay-"

"What if something triggers one of your flashbacks?" Bonnie cut in. Ever since she had become the anchor for the Other Side she became like a supernatural Empath, channeling all the emotions of those beings on both the purgatory and human planes. And the feelings radiating around Stefan was like trying to walk through a brick wall. "If you can't get control of it the way Katherine showed you in time before you try to attack someone- "

"Those guys already think I'm a vulnerable mess," Stefan insisted, not commenting on the 'attacking' part that Bonnie had said, because it was true. "I can use that to my advantage, slip under their radar and find out what they really know-"

"Stefan-"

"As long as Damon is still missing Elena," Stefan cut Elena off. "I'm never going to be okay, and if I don't _everything_ I can to try and find him, then I'm going to lose my mind for real."

"Hey," Jeremy's voice came from the back door that led off the kitchen. His hoodie was drawn up over his head and white ear buds were in his ears, he had left an hour ago to go on a run. He caught sight of everyone at a standstill kind of pose watching each other like there was a loaded bomb in the room. He lowered the ear buds form his ears. "What's going on? Why was your mom here Caroline?"

"I have something I have to do," Stefan told the youngest Gilbert. "I need you to stay indoors until I get back."

"Stefan you're not doing this alone!" Elena insisted.

Stefan stared at his ex-girlfriend/current/always dear friend. "I should be back in a few hours-"

"Stefan if there's something going on you're going to need someone to watch your back," Jeremey insisted, moving to stand closer to Bonnie. Stefan had become like the older brother he never had and he wasn't about to let him walk into something potentially dangerous alone.

"No _I _need you all to stay here until I call, if there's a threat in town you I'm not going to expose everyone to it."

"I'm a _hunter,"_ Jeremy volleyed back. "I can handle myself."

"So can the rest of us," Elena agreed with her brother.

"Let him go," Bonnie said, causing everyone to look at her in bewilderment. "He's right, the _FBI_ was just here," Jeremy's eyes went wide at the homophone, she glanced at him with a silent '_later'_ look. "If we all go wandering into town together it'll look too suspicious, it's better if Stefan does this alone."

Stefan gave Bonnie a nod laced with gratitude and walked out the door, the others watching him.

**xxxxXxxx**

Damon's head felt heavy, like molasses had been poured over the folds of his brain and left to harden. The world was a blur of undefined shapes. Wes leaned over him, and Damon was too out of it to tell him to go to hell or eat his face off like he wanted to. "What did you do to me?" Damon's words came out slurred, like the molasses in his brain had melted and trickled over his vocal chords.

"Vervain-" Wes reached up and adjusted the roller clamp controlling the flow rate of an IV bag containing saline with large pieces of Vervain floating in it. "A constant drip to keep you calm," Wes followed a second set of IV tubing going in Damon's other arm up to another bag, one that was a red so dark it was almost black. "Augustine blood tends to make my test subjects a little jumpy, I can't risk any injuries."

"Isn't that nice of you." Damon's words slurred deeper and his breathing was in puffs, he felt like he was floating in a murky ocean.

"It's completely self-serving." Wes returned with a smile on his face that was too wide to look like anything but someone who enjoyed pulling things apart to see how they worked, living things included. "I can't ruin months' worth of research because of one strung out Vampire." He held a syringe in his hand filled with a clear liquid. He flicked out the bubbles and injected it into Damon's forearm.

Damon hissed as the minimal pain on his over sensitized nerves stung like hell. The air was thick with the scent of blood, Damon could smell it like a fog cloud heavy with vapor; he hadn't eaten anything since he'd been brought here. Every time that he was dragged out of his cell and was brought to the lab he had always been pumped full of blood from an IV. At first it burned, like the vervain going up his arm should have, and his body convulsed from the foreign thing, rejecting it like a bad organ donation. But after the fourth day without any other kind of blood, his body took it in because it was starving for food, even without ingesting it personally, the blood felt warm, thick, like he had freshly swallowed it.

That wasn't the sense he was getting from the blood smell in the air, it smelled like something was _wrong_ with it.

Damon felt worse than when he had gotten drunk from the entire top shelf at a bar in New Orleans. "You know I'm going to kill you." His words were slurred to hell and his eyes were so dilated that the grow bulbs overhead made his pupils sizzle from the absorption of the light. "It's just a matter of when."

Wes smiled so widely Damon could see it decay at the ends. "I like you Damon, the Augustine's were right, you are a _perfect_ candidate for this." He moved away from Damon, and the sound of a steel door opened from somewhere off to the right. Then there came the sound of whimpering, and the smell of blood grew thicker, overpowering.

Wes came back to the table Damon was strapped down to, and he wasn't alone. He pushed a young brunette girl in front of him, in a dirty looking white sun dress and bare feet.

"No, please!" Tears streaked down the girl's face, she tried to struggle from Wes' grip but her hands were bound in front of her by a length of rope.

Wes reached into the pocket of his lab coat and pulled out a silver Beretta handgun, aiming it at the girl's chest. "Remember what we talked about? You move before I tell you too, you die."

The girl whimpered again, trying to hide her face into her chest in the absence of being able to cover it up with her bound hands; her breathing so rapid it sounded like running footsteps to Damon's heightened ears.

Damon felt as Wes reached over and undid the metal collar around his neck, then the leather strap that was over his head and he couldn't control how his head listed to one side without the support. The girl watched all this with a silent terror in her eyes.

"What are you doing?" Damon slurred out.

"You handled the Typhus so well earlier Damon. Plus all this beta testing with my new improved Augustine Blood" Wes said. "I figured you deserved a little reward." He kept one hand trained with the gun on the girl, and reached into his lab coat again, coming out with a switchblade which he opened with a slice of a noise, reaching out to grab the girl's arm.

She jerked away from his reaching hand. "No, please, leave me alone!"

"It's okay sweetheart," Wes placed the gun right up to her chest. He snatched her arm, and Damon finally saw the source of the smell, a four inch barely clotted scab on her left forearm.

"No-" The girl sobbed, she tried to pull her arm out of Wes's grip, shaking her head in between sobs. "Please, just leave me alone; don't hurt me again!-"

"Shh," Wes stroked her tangled hair like he was placating a child afraid of monsters under the bed. "It's going to be alright." He brought the blade down on her arm, slicing through the scab.

The girl cried out, blood started leaking out of her arm. "No please!" she sobbed louder as Wes jerked her arm and hovered above Damon's face.

"Have a drink on me Damon," Wes shoved the girl's bleeding arm in Damon's mouth. Damon's reaction was purely instinct, he had been starved for days, even with the blood from the IV, the hunger craving was overpowering. His fangs retracted and he bit through the girl's arm, she screamed horrendously.

The blood poured thick and warm down his throat, but the warmth quickly turned rancid. When Elena had first turned she said she couldn't keep blood bags down, that they tasted like "hot garbage", This was worse than that, the blood was like acid, vomiting its way up his windpipe. His fangs released from the girl's skin and she fell back with a cry and he fell back on the table, still gagging.

Wes grabbed the girl like she was a gathering of dirty laundry, shoving her into the hands of two Vampires that had dragged Damon from his cell. They dragged the girl away, her screams echoed down a hallway.

"It's working," Wes's eyes were dilated in the bright light, manic. "You're transitioning Damon," his smile was just as manic as his eyes. "It's only a matter of time." He leaned over Damon, not close enough for Damon to lunge at him. "You're going to solve the world's Vampire epidemic, starting with your home town." Wes side stepped around Damon's perceived reach, moving behind his head, securing the strap back across his forehead. "Your girlfriend Elena," he tightened the strap harder, making Damon grunt. "That little blonde Caroline- I'll make sure their first in line-"

"You're dead!" Damon grunted out around the pain corroding him, his throat was withering, no matter how many times he coughed, he couldn't clear it.

"Oh you're right, I'm sorry-how _rude_ of me-" Wes touched his hand to his head like he had a momentary lapse of adle headedness. "I forgot about Stefan-don't look so shocked, it's amazing how much you can learn when you have the right kind of connections." He leaned down so that he was right by Damon's face. "Those other two will be tests on your new persona and strength, but the _real_ proof that this is all worthwhile will be watching as you rip your brother's throat from his neck."

Damon lunged up hard, the strap snapping like a twig from his head. Wes pulled back, but not fast enough before Damon's fangs tore a chunk out his earlobe. Wes cried out and Damon fell back in agony at the now unbearable taste of human blood.

Wes grabbed at the torn, bleeding chunk of his ear, he grabbed the roller clamp and opened the Vervain drip completely. Damon writhed and screamed, then slowly sank down into listlessness, his head was forced back down and strapped to the table with a new piece of leather, the metal collar shoved back onto his neck, choking his windpipe. He faded on the edge of consciousness, an image of Elena filtering into his mind, her dark curls, her worried eyes. The image shifted, a third person overview, of Stefan, walking, moving somewhere, to a place Damon couldn't see, his brother's eyes hard, fractured around the edges.

"_Stefan-" _

The world blacked out completely.

**xxxxXxxx **

"You've _got_ to be kidding me-" Katherine was leaned over as far as she could over the bar at the Grill without actually climbing over it. She shot a look at Matt Donovan that would've compelled him to eat his own tongue had she still been a vampire.

"I'm sorry Katherine," Matt said wiping off the counter with a wet bar rag. "I can't make special exceptions, especially since we're not even friends." He removed a brown paper bag from the counter out of her reach that she had flirted a new young waiter into preparing for her. "You either pay for the food or I can't give it to you." This had been a regular occurrence for weeks now, but it still weirded out Matt to see Katherine Pierce ordering take out from the Grille.

Katherine jerked a hand on his wrist in a death grip. "It's deep fried chicken by product on two day old wheat toast! How far back can it set you, 99 cents?-"

"I could lose my job-"

"I saved your _life_," Katherine snapped.

"You stabbed me in the chest!" Matt interjected.

"Exactly," Katherine retorted, tilting her head at him so her thick curls tumbled sideways. "Which in turned saved your life, you owe me!"

"Look, I'm grateful for that, but I had to buy a brand new bottle of Patron to replace the one you stole from the inventory, so unless you have cash or credit I can't help you." Matt jerked his hand out of Katherine's grip, with a bit of a wince, though it wasn't Vampire strength anymore, it was still strong.

Katherine released Matt's wrist and slammed her hand on the bar top, angry that it didn't indent from the pressure. Spending 500 years as something, and only three months as something else wasn't an adjustment that was easy to handle, especially considering she only had a handful of months to spend as anything at all. She pulled up from off the bar and stormed away with a click of heels.

"Where are you going?" Matt asked her, backing up towards the inventory boxes of alcohol he had yet to go through. Technically he was still underage to do it, but the bartender was out in the alleyway getting stoned, so there was no one else to perform the task.

Katherine turned back to him in a whole body move. "To the ladies room, I'm a _real girl_ now Mattie, its part of my new character flaw. Is that going to be another problem for you?"

Matt held up his hands in surrender, and was glad when Katherine went with it and continued on her intended path.

Matt bent down by one of the boxes, pulling out glass bottles Kettle One Vodka, adding them to the second lowest shelf on the bar.

It was just a little past noon, so the Grille wasn't too crowded yet, only a few high school seniors grabbing lunch off campus. But after another minute, one of the boys at the table threw down some money and the group left in a whirl of laughter.

Matt grabbed an empty bin from behind the bar and went too bus the now empty table. He picked up the 20 dollar bill, which was just enough to cover the food, without a tip. "Thanks a lot guys," He stuffed the money in the pocket of the black apron around his waist and started placing dirty dishes and napkins inside the bin.

The door opened behind him.

"Excuse me?"

The voice that came behind him was familiar, newly familiar. He turned around and saw one of the two FBI agents that had been there earlier stop just inside the door, dressed down from his suit in jeans, plaid and a canvas jacket.

"Agent Miller?" Matt hoped he didn't sound as surprised as he was. After the two Agents had left the Grille he had tried calling Elena to let her know what was going on, but his cellphone battery had died, and there had been too much commotion in the front of the house from the delivery vans to try and use the phone behind the bar without being overheard.

Agent Miller stepped more into the bar. "It's _Matt_ right?" The dude was well over 6 feet tall, which became more apparent and more intimidating as he came closer.

"Yeah," Matt set down his bin on the table. "Is there something you needed?"

"I just need to ask you a few questions," the FBI agent. "About Damon Salvatore's disappearance."

"I'm working," Matt gestured towards the table he was busing. "My boss will kill me if I don't get this done."

"I understand-" Agent Miller held up a hand. "Tell you what-how about you box up a burger for me? The works plus fried onions and bacon. We can talk while you do that, sound good?"

Agent Miller's voice was calming enough, and Matt didn't want to flat out refuse, having no idea how that would sit with a Federal Agent. "Yeah sure, I'll tell the kitchen to get that started for you, just have a seat okay?" he gestured to one of the many empty tables around the one he was cleaning.

"Thanks," Agent Miller offered him a brief, but sincere smile, dropping into one of the wooden chairs.

Matt dropped off the dirty dishes in the kitchen, dumping them into the deep welled aluminum sink half full of soapy water. He headed towards the back storage room where he had been charging his cellphone, this time intent on actually _calling _Elena to let her know that the FBI was still asking about Damon. He rounded the portioned corner and ran smack into Katherine coming out of the restroom.

"Ugh!" Katherine made a growl of displeasure and being rammed into. "Careful, I'm fragile now remember?" She wiped at the front of her shirt like something had spilled on it. "Where are you going in such a rush?" Katherine swiveled her head before Matt could answer, noticing Agent Miller sitting, back towards her. "Who's your friend?" Her voice had lowered an octave, and she looked on a little too appreciatively at the man.

Matt grabbed her arm and yanked her back down the hall in front of the men's room door until they were both out of sight of the dining room.

Katherine jerked out of his grip with a scowl. "What is wrong with you?"

"That man is with the FBI," Matt normally withheld information from Katherine Pierce, he didn't _disclose_ it to her, but things had changed, he didn't like it, but they did. "Him and his partner have been asking about Damon going missing-"

Katherine's eyes turned somewhat startled at that new information, like she wasn't used to the humanity pushing through what she could normally mask. "Did you ask him what he knows?"

"He's a _federal_ agent," Matt emphasized again. "It's not like he's just going to let me walk up to him and start questioning why he's here."

"Of course he's not going to _let_ you ask him Matt, you just _do it!"_ Katherine returned like Matt was stupid. "If he knows anything about Damon then we can't just let him walk away!"

"You're only saying that because you want to stay on Stefan's good side," Matt cut in. "I don't know what your new deal is with him, but we both know you never cared about Damon, so how about you quit pretending?"

"You know _nothing_ about me Matt," Katherine hissed, her voice low and piercing like a knife blade. "Or about Damon and Stefan before they became modern and contemporary_. So _don't give me any more of your Dr. Phil on set psychology."

"Alright fine," Matt cut her off. "Whatever you're about to try isn't going to work anyway. You're not a vampire anymore, you can't compel people to do what you want. "

"I was a _woman_ long before I was a vampire Mattie Blue-Blue," Katherine retorted like Matt was a child. "And I never needed compulsion to get what I wanted." She smoothed out the invisible wrinkles in her tight low cut black top, and tight black skinny jeans, hiked up her breasts, and ran preening hands through her mass of curls. She pushed past Matt and walking back out to the dining area.

"Katherine, no!-" Matt made a move for her arm, but she dodged it and walked over to Agent Miller's table, her stride getting slinky the closer she got; Matt followed closely behind her.

"Hey there handsome-"Katherine dropped her voice down lower, like molasses unfreezing from a maple tree in spring. She set her hand on the man's shoulder, pleased at all that she felt underneath his jacket. Her actions made him turn up to face her. "Mind if I join you?-"

Katherine's voice stalled out, the smile evaporated off of her face. Matt watched as it practically crashed onto the floor.

**["**_Hey there," she slunk her hand down the man's chest. "Back for more handsome?"_

_He reciprocated her action with firm hands all down her body, she allowed it because he was solid and tall, and sexy, and who said you couldn't play with your food before eating it?_

_Something stabbed her in the leg and she came up gasping, to a knife at her throat._

"_Hey yourself."_**]**

"_Shi-,"_ Katherine cursed, low, but everyone still heard her. "Sorry, wrong table."

"Ms. Gilbert?" Agent Miller creased his eyes at her.

"And _wrong_ girl!" Katherine pointed at Agent Miller and started to back away. "But don't worry I _get that a lot,_ Small town you know?_"_ the last words were said in a whisper. "Can't understand why though, I mean, I have _way _better style-"

"Sorry Agent Miller," Matt apologized, trying to do damage control. "She's still trying to work off what she had last night," he grabbed her arm, a little too forcefully, "Come on Katherine-"

Agent Miller's face first showed confusion at what everything that was happening in front of him, but then, a flash of recognition as hot as a lightning bolt came across his eyes. He stood up, and a flash of silver came from his jacket, belonging to a 5 inch blade bowie knife.

"Whoa!" Matt held out his hands at the sight of the blade, "Dude, what are you doing!?"

Agent Miller pointed the knife at Katherine, walking down towards her. "What the hell-?"

Katherine moved so that she backed into Matt, but a hard yank grabbed her by her arm and turned her around, right into the blade of the knife centimeters away from her carotid artery.

"Katherine!" Matt stared at the 'FBI agent' wielding a hunting knife at Katherine's neck. The air was tense like a vat of gun powder about to hit an accelerant. He had no love loss for Katherine Piece, but that didn't mean the sight of an over 6 foot tall man brandishing a knife at her didn't affect him at all.

Agent Miller stared at Katherine like someone who had seen a ghost jump back into a body. "How are you _alive?"_ The blade of the knife pierced the skin of her neck, sending drips of blood on her skin.

Katherine gasped at the pain. "You know what they say about Kat's having nine lives?" She reached behind her for something to use as a weapon. Without her Vampire strength she had to make do with a dirty plate Matt had neglected to clean from the table behind her. She picked it up and smashed it into Agent Miller's face; it cut gashes across his forehead, but wasn't a lethal blow. In actuality compared to her now human height and build, he should've easily taken her, but it actually stunned him enough for her to grab a chair and break it apart hard over his head and then he dropped into a heavy heap on the floor.

"You probably should've tried harder." Katherine threw away the remaining splinters of the chair to the ground, breathing hard.

Matt stared down at the unconscious FBI agent and back up to Katherine. "What the hell was that about?!"

"Shut up, and help me tie him up before he wakes up!" Katherine barked.


	4. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR**

"_Don't you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct."_

-Barbara Corcoran

_**xxxxXxxx**_

_Chicago, Illinois _

_2009_

_The bar was bright and alive, packed with people, and had the cloying aroma of 20 different varieties of alcohol. The bar part of the bar was a long black mahogany thing filled from end to end. A woman sat in the middle of it all: brunette, in a short black silk thing and sky high heels, sipping on a tumbler dark with rum._

"_So I take it the way you're staring at her ass the recon went well," Samuel questioned._

_Sam looked away from the woman and back over to his grandfather across the cramped table where they were sitting, shoved into a corner amidst a fog of cigarette smoke. "She gave up the goods about her last 'boyfriend' who dumped her; I managed to track him down to the city morgue."_

"_Did you get his blood?"_

_Sam reached into his suit jacket pocket and pulled out a syringe half full of dark blood. "The guard at the door wasn't too happy about the FBI heading there after hours, but I convinced him to look the other way."_

"_I'm not even gonna ask," Samuel returned. He'd only been hunting with his grandson for three months, but the things he had seen Sam do in that time were amazingly tactical, skilled, and ruthless. "We need to draw her out, we can't get a clean shot at the bar, too many people watching."_

"_That won't be a problem," Sam said clinically, hiding away the vial of blood up under his jacket sleeve._

_Samuel looked half impressed, half disgusted at Sam. "Son, you have a couple of brass ones to sleep with a Vamp."_

"_I needed a way to distract her," Sam returned, glancing back up over to the bar, watching Katherine Pierce sip her drink in a silhouette of full breasts and full curves. "These things tend to get cocky when they think they're dominating." He continued to stare until she turned and caught him._

_She set her drink down on the bar, slinking slowly to him. "Hey there," She slowed her pace even more, dropping her voice to full on molasses mode, smelling like sex, and blood._

_He stood up to meet her and she smiled up at him appreciatively._

"_Back for more handsome?" One of her hands trailed down his chest. Sam didn't hesitate, he jabbed the syringe into her leg._

_She gasped, and pulled back in shock, and by the time she looked back up, he had his knife at her throat, concealing it from the view of the bar patrons._

"_Hey yourself."_

_She growled and slumped against him a second later._

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Light is what Sam came back into consciousness too, his head rang with that sensation he felt too many times from repeated concussions. He shook his head, regretting it when it ramped up the pain behind his eyes even more. His body felt tight, and a tug of his arms and a glance down revealed him to be lashed to one of the bar table chairs with a piece of extension cord.

"Glad you could join us," the voice spoke to Sam's right, and he traced it over to the form of Katherine Pierce, in all black, she was holding out his knife, using it to file her nails. Beside her the kid from the bar had his gun out and was aiming it at him.

"Trying to kill me twice can wear anyone one out so your break from reality is understandable," Katherine said to Sam.

"I helped you tie him up Katherine," Matt Donovan pointed the gun with a hard jerk at Sam. "Now you need to tell me why the hell I'm holding an FBI agent hostage."

"Because he's _not _an FBI agent Mattie," Katherine stopped filing her nail's with Sam's blade and pointed it at him. "He's a hunter."

Sam blinked hard from the pain in his head. After having his skull drilled manually with screws by Crowley, he didn't know how much more abuse his skull could actually take. He watched the brunette approach him as slowly as that time in the bar. "Yeah, and you're still a Vampire."

"Actually I'm not anymore," Katherine returned. "But that's another story for another time."

"What are you _talking_ about he's a _hunter?-" _Matt turned to Sam then Katherine in bewilderment.

Sam stared at Katherine, trying to process what she had just said about _not_ being a Vampire, knowing that she was most likely weaving a huge ass sort of manipulative lie. And like his head bashing, he had had enough of manipulative lies, so he dropped it in favor of focusing on the shit of a predicament he was currently in.

The front door opened, pouring in a stream of daylight, cutting off Matt's voice and Sam's thoughts. Sam turned, already trying to figure out a way to get whoever it was to get the hell out before they got themselves killed.

The form in the door became the shape of Stefan Salvatore. He stepped into the shadow of the bar created by the backlit sunlight that shone behind him. Sam opened his mouth to tell the kid to get out, but he was beaten to it, by Katherine:

"Stefan," Katherine smiled on her face.

Stefan surveyed the scene in front of him, Sam tied to a chair, having weapons pointed at him, but the look in his eyes wasn't complete freaking out as to a hostage situation, they were something else. Like he was used to things like this.

"Katherine what the hell are you doing?" Stefan shut the door closed with a thud of a sound.

"Negotiating on your behalf," Katherine responded like it was a common answer. "Sorry," she waved the knife blade around like a conductor's baton. "Where are my manners? Stefan Salvatore," She pointed the knife at Sam, doing a little courtly kind of bow. "This is 'Agent Miller', or if you want, 'Agent Jennings' as he called himself back in 2009. Though I take it _neither _one of those is your _actual _name, so that leaves me at a bit of a loss as to what to carve on your tombstone-"

"He's a Hunter," Matt spoke to Stefan, and Sam saw that the other teenage guy react with more than a: '_what the hell is that?'_ curiosity at his words.

"Not _Hunter _with a capital H, Matt," Katherine insisted like Matt was stupid. "_A _hunter."

"What are you talking about?" Stefan asked. His dark eyes moved over to Sam, who felt again the intensity of the gaze that was way older than 17, and now he knew why.

"Hunters aren't Vampire specific," Katherine Pierce stated like it was a fact she had picked up in history class, casting looks at both Matt and Stefan. "They kill everything supernatural that crosses their paths: vampires, witches, werewolves, I've heard even _ghosts_, but that's a bit of a stretch even for me."

Stefan Salvatore's eyes turned dark, the shade Sam had seen far too much when something supernatural was about to _do_ something supernatural.

"What do you know about my brother?" Stefan made a move that could only be described as a lunge at Sam, but was held back by Katherine.

"Relax, Stefan," Katherine held her hand to his chest, blocking his path. "If you kill him too early we're never going to find out what he knows-"

"I don't know anything!" Sam retorted, his anger going from present to full on at the debates on how to kill him like he was a marked animal. "I've never even _heard_ of your brother until yesterday." he looked up at Stefan, then to Katherine. "But assuming that your family and your girlfriend are the same species I get what killed Jessie Turner, why you're covering up your brother's tracks-"

A hand grabbed Sam's neck, choking off the air in his lungs, he saw Stefan standing over him, with spider webbed veins running down his face, a set of _fangs,_ not retractable teeth, bared in front of him.

"Stop _lying!"_

Sam had seconds before he knew he was going to black out, something that was proven extremely _bad_ to do in a nest of vampires. Katherine had his knife, so using it to cut through the wires was out, so was trying to break the physical hold Stefan had on his neck. That left option three:

"Then _who_?" Sam's voice was raspy from lack of air and tracheal pressure. "Who killed that kid if it wasn't your brother?"

Stefan hadn't lied to Sam and Dean about the things that he knew, he had withheld them. As much as Sam knew that basically spelled out a hell of a problem, he had the tiniest bit of respect that Stefan wasn't a stupid Vampire, he knew how to keep himself hidden. But watching him a few hours ago- Sam knew from _years_ of reading people that Stefan's PTSD cycle hadn't been an act, and his brother was a trigger.

Sam felt his neck being released and he choked massively, coughing up a bit of blood from where he'd bitten through his tongue, he spat the dribble down his chin and stared up at the vampire. "You want to find your brother, you tell me what I need to know."

Stefan lowered his hands onto the arms of the chair, getting right up into Sam's face. "Or you tell me what _I_ need to know."

There was a brief sensation of losing control, like Sam had felt when he had taken that hit of street drugs in the alleyway to try to combat Lucifer enhanced sleep deprivation, but then the feeling fell away like a melting glacier.

"It won't work, Stefan," Katherine's face emerged from behind Stefan. She reached down, pulling up the left side of Sam's jacket, then ripped half the buttons off of his button up shirt exposing the black tattoo on his upper chest that he had re inked after Cas had removed it.

"What the hell is that?" Matt finally broke his silence and stared, gun still aimed at Sam.

"It's a warding symbol against supernatural possession." Katherine held Sam's shirt open like a prize. "It was hard to notice at first, it was a little too dark to notice much of anything outside the sense of touch," Katherine adapted a smug smile, looking at Stefan. "No offense Stefan, you will always be amazing_, _but _you,"_ Katherine turned a seducing eye towards Sam. "You were rougher than sandpaper."

"Can you just _skip _that part Katherine?" Stefan cut in at the same time Matt made a grunted sound of displeasure.

"The tattoo's like permanent vervain," Katherine returned, finally releasing Sam's shirt with a jerk like she was dropping foul smelling rags into the incinerator, locking eyes with him. "It makes him immune to compulsion, which I found out _later on _when you stabbed me in the leg with that syringe of Dead Man's Blood."

"Which should have ended you-" Sam retorted. "Which is the part that I don't understand."

"That's not possible; Dead Man's Blood is just a _myth," _Stefan said it like he was talking about the the Easter Bunny and Santa Claus.

"Tell that to the other vampires that I killed with it," Sam retorted.

Stefan was most likely incredibly older than Sam, but Sam was also older in his own right; not permanently stuck as a teenager and with 9 years of a Hunters life and 180 years in Hell. Things that didn't just leave one unmarked. Both of their hostiles met each other, circling, waiting for the moment for the jugular shot to be claimed.

"The blood of dead bodies breaks down into an unstable carbon acid Stefan," Katherine informed. "It's not lethal to a vampire, but it can be used to keep them down long enough so that someone like _this_ can chop their heads off. More of a flashier way to do it then a stake through the heart," she pressed the knife blade against Sam's neck. "I never got to thank you for almost killing me." The knife blade drew a line of blood down Sam's neck.

"If you wanted to kill me you would've done it by now," Sam retorted, having enough experience as to how these things went. "So how about you stop with the theatrics and get to the point?"

This produced a smile from Katherine. "Ooh," she pouted her lips into the word. "Still so feisty."

"Alright Katherine enough!" Stefan intervened, but he didn't exactly sound like he was doing so for Sam's behalf. He lowered his arms and backed up about half a foot, looking down at him. "You're _partner_, I'm assuming he a hunter too?" When Sam chose not to answer he got right down in front of Sam's face again, the webbed lines of dark blood exposing his veins on the surface of his face. "I can't compel you, but I _can_ kill you, so I suggest you answer the question."

"Stefan, as _hot_ as your bad cop routine is," Katherine reached into Sam's jacket, and pulled out his cellphone. "I think you should just do things the easy way," she tossed Stefan the phone.

The other Vampire caught the phone and began to flip through the contacts in it. Sam watched as he opted to press the first speed dial number.

Sam listened to the ring, only once before the call connected.

"_Hey, where the hell are you?-"_

Sam heard Dean's voice being very loud through his phone.

"We need to talk," Stefan said into the phone, turning to watch Sam watching him.

**xxxxXxxx**

Dean was trying to watch TV, a grainy version of Casa Erotica 12 in 3D (only without the 3D because it was a rabbit eared set). The hotel he found had a surprisingly spectacular view of the _actual _Mystic Falls, a giant double set of water falls that threw themselves down over 500 feet of a tan rock face quarry into a basin of turquoise water below.

When he first got there he had taken a quick shower, combed through the police records of all the disappearances, all of them except the one concerning Damon Salvatore were out and baited to the local media, families pleading for the return of their missing loved ones, the whole nine. He called several of the Sherriff's deputies, but they were as tight lipped as the woman herself. Whatever it was they were hiding, they made damn sure to cover their bases.

He managed to do all of this in the 40 minutes Sam had been out getting the story on the bus boy at the restaurant. Dean had called Sam 5 minutes after that, then five minutes after _that_ , but both calls had gone straight to voicemail, Dean has assumed Sam had shut the phone off to look more "professional" in front of the teenager. He had 'assumed' all of this while he tried not to over react and think that something had gone wrong. Even with all the shit that had blown up in between them Dean could not turn off the part of him that overreacted when it came to Sam, he couldn't help it. He'd been the kid's protector since he ran out of the house with him after the fire. It had morphed since that time, from obligation to reason. Sam hating him did nothing to change that.

Dean tried to distract himself by trying to see the things he was supposed to see through the 5 pixels on the television, but Casa Erotica had been sans Erotica so he had flipped off the TV with the ancient looking remote, throwing it down on the white washed table top. His phone was beside a brochure talking about the water falls that were about 20 feet in front of his face. "Screw it," He picked up the phone, which lit up in his hand a second later with Sam's number on the contact ID.

He answered the call. "Hey, where the hell are you?"

"_We need to talk."_

Dean was hit with the sensation of someone pouring needles down his spine. "Who is this?" The voice sounded vaguely familiar, but the only thing that Dean was thinking about was that the person answering Sam's phone _wasn't _Sam.

"_That's not important. The only thing you need to know is that I have your partner, and you have 20 minutes to come meet him before there's nothing left of him to meet."_

The needle sensation was replaced by something more feral, primal. His mind whirred to a week ago, to Sam strapped to a chair, screaming as screws were being twisted into his brain. "Look, I don't know who the hell you are but if you do _anything_ to him!-"

"_He's at the Mystic Grill, one block from the clock tower in the center of town, you now have 19 minutes." _The call disconnected.

Dean stared at the phone in a shock that no one was around to see except his heated emotions. "Damnit!" He grabbed his gun from off the top of the TV. He had no idea who he was up against so he added a six inch bowie knife, concealing it in his jacket pocket, grabbed his keys and ran out the door. The Impala was parked on a lower level parking lot of log bumpers and dirt. He climbed in the car, and floored the accelerator pulling out so fast that half the parking lot was gone under his tires. He continued at this speed, barely having time to notice that not one of Sheriff Forbes' deputies were stopping him, not that he would have let that happen regardless.

The structures of the town blew by in the much less than 20 minutes it took for Dean to drive to the Mystic Grill. He slanted the Impala into the parking lot of the building across the street from the restaurant. Peeled worn lettering revealed the building to a former physician's office. Unlike before, the town was busy. People crowded the streets: teenagers, young couples with families in strollers and held in hands of parents. Dean walked past the people at as normal of a pace as possible until he reached the restaurant /bar he and Sam had been at not five hours before.

He bypassed the front door, using a crowd of teenagers as cover and ducked behind the alleyway that led to the service entrance. He was more concealed here than on the street, but the disadvantage lay in the fact that the back structure of the bar was absent of any windows. Dean made his way up the ramp, pressing his ear to the door, but it was solid concrete and no sound from what was going on inside reached him. He placed a hand to the door knob and twisted.

"Agent Ryson-"

The voice turned Dean around to see Elena Gilbert standing at the base of the ramp, a denim jacket thrown over a red shirt and jeans that had replaced her mini dress. She watched him with dark eyes and started to walk up the ramp, "I was just meeting Stefan for lunch," her heels clicked as she ascended higher until she reached the level where Dean stood. "Is there something wrong?"

What Elena said set a cog in motion in Dean's head, the voice on the phone, Dean was too busy thinking about other things to put the sound at the forefront an hour ago, but now he knew where he had heard it before. "You're saying Stefan's in _there?"_

Something seemed to click with Elena, like she had realized her mistake too late to take it back. "Yeah, we're just meet-"

"Alright enough," Dean took half a second to look behind him before he pulled out his silver colt and cocked it at her, concealing the gesture under the hem of her jacket.

Elena started at the sight of the gun. "What are you doing?!"

"I'm not going to hurt you," Dean returned, keeping his voice low. No one was around but them, but he was pretty sure that wasn't the case inside Mystic Grill. "You're walking in there with me like nothing's going on, no tricks, no tip offs to your friend inside understand?"

Elena looked like she wanted to protest, eyeing the gun like she wanted to do something violent despite its presence, but she didn't act on the emotion. Dean opened the door, and held it open for her, not pushing her inside because it would be too obvious if someone came upon them, and despite the situation, she wasn't a hostage. He didn't take pleasure in what he was doing, but if she were somehow involved in what was happening to Sam, he wasn't about to take chances either.

Elena move under his arm, and he came in close behind, moving the gun behind her back, stepping into the bar that swallowed his vision in shadow.

"Stefan?"

Elena called out Stefan's name as Dean's vision returned to color in increments. He entered the bar the same way he had before, past a partitioned section of doors for the restrooms and the kitchen. A handful of feet later the partition spilled out into the opened dining area.

Stefan Salvatore first noticed Elena, at the same time Dean noticed Sam.

Who was tied to a chair with extension cord, face a bloody mess with his own gun and knife pointed at him by the blonde bus boy and a woman that looked _exactly_ like Elena Gilbert.

Sam locked eyes with Dean, not angry or hostile, but a look that let Dean know that something more was going on then what he was just seeing.

"What the hell's going on?" Elena pushed her way past Dean for two steps, but he yanked her back by her arm and pulled his gun out from behind her back, pointing it at Stefan Salvatore.

"That's exactly what I want to know," Dean retorted, gun aimed right at Stefan's chest, looking over at the woman who could be Elena's sister.

"Let Elena go," Stefan spoke calmly but his voice had that same undercurrent that Dean had heard earlier, that predatory growl underneath all the words. "She has nothing to do with this."

"Oh she has something to do with this if she's walking in here to meet you when all this is going down!" Dean barked, waving the gun at Stefan.

"I didn't know that this was happening!" Elena protested, struggling slightly against Dean's grip. But Dean had been in enough fights and situations like this one and had developed an instinct about them, and he could tell that Elena Gilbert was holding back.

"There's no such thing as coincidence when someone's tied to a chair with a gun pointed at them!" Dean retorted.

"You're echoing my exact same sentiment," Stefan replied, his voice moving from its calm from earlier to something a little angrier. "So why don't you let Elena go before things turn uglier then you want them to?"

"What happened to PTSD Boy?" Dean drew out his words longer than necessary to give him a chance to figure out how to draw the bead off of Sam. "You trade it all in for bad ass kidnapping and twin hook ups?"

"Okay, _that's _insulting-" the other woman who looked exactly like Elena pointed a finger at Dean, one hand on the knife as it move to Sam's neck. "It's going to cost your friend here a pint of blood," she sliced a line through Sam's neck, and he grunted out a scream.

"Katherine," Stefan finally said the woman's name, "enough!-"

Dean raised the gun up and aimed it at Elena Gilbert's neck.

"Stefan!"

"They're Vamps!" Sam shouted it like a bad high school play, like he didn't know how to verbally communicate with Dean now that he was this angry at him.

Elena and Sam's words tripped on each other, but it was Sam's that Dean recognized first. Dean shot Sam a half second look that said: _why the fuck didn't you tell me sooner?_ He reached around for the knife he had in his jacket, it wasn't the machete he wanted, and now actually longed for, but it wasn't like he had a choice. He drew the knife out and aimed the blade in Stefan's direction.

"You need to put that down," Stefan said it like an order to reprimand a wayward toddler, taking almost a lazy step towards Dean. "Hunter or not, you're out numbered and you know it."

"Outnumbered or not," Dean's voice dropped as cold as ice. "If your little doppelganger girlfriend makes a move on my brother again I will kill you before you can blink once."

'Katherine' made a noise of shock, looking to Sam like they were old friends. "You never told me you had a brother, I'm hurt," She dug the knife in deeper making the blood leak a trail down Sam's neck.

Dean's vision went blood red, he shoved Elena, had barely enough time to notice how she was hardly affected by such a forceful blow, lunging with the knife blade at Stefan Salvatore's form, who was there one moment, then gone at a high velocity speed. But Dean had spent an entire year fighting vampires and other monsters in Purgatory, so his gaze managed to track Stefan's final location, and aim the blade right into his stomach.

Stefan dropped, choking. Vampires weren't easy things to kill, normally nothing would keep them down for long, so Dean was surprised by such a reaction from the vampire.

"Stefan!" Elena Gilbert's cry tore through the air like she had a knife of her own, and then she became a blur and all of Dean's reaction that something wasn't right about her came to fruition when she appeared right in front of him, next to Stefan, fangs bared right in Dean's face.

Dean aimed his gun at her, but she managed to duck from the bullets which tore into the post above Sam's head. Dean had only a moment to catch a breath from the bullet which had missed Sam's head by inches, when he heard Sam call out his name, in that voice that he used when he meant: "_turn around."_

Which Dean did in time to see Elena behind him, grabbing the gun and yanking it out of his hand with a hard torque of his wrist, his colt was sent skittering somewhere behind the bar. Dean ducked a blow from Elena that would've snapped his neck, and came back up holding out his zippo lighter, flame tip out to a newspaper, the orange light lit up the paper in a smolder.

Dean held out the burning paper like an Olympic torch towards Stefan who was still writhing on the ground. "Make one more move Vamperella and I'm going to see if it's true what they say about fire and vampires."

Elena backed off. "You can't!-"

Dean watched as Elena's eyes flicked to Stefan then to Matt Donovan who had lowered Sam's gun at the sight of the open flame.

"Not all of us are Vampires!" Elena insisted. "If you drop that you'll kill innocent people!"

"Then you need to make a decision real fast kid," Dean said to her. "Cause you won't like it when I do it for you."

Elena's fangs lowered back into her mouth and she backed away, moving over to Sam, which was an action Dean watched like she was about to drop a live grenade on his brother's head. There was the hard sound of breaking wire as Elena broke the bindings that held Sam to the chair, the noise echoed simultaneously with the sound of Stefan pulling the knife out of his stomach.

Elena's twin (which was a fact that was making Dean's head spin) glared at her. "What the hell are you doing?!"

"What does it look like?" Elena dropped the broken pieces of extension cord to the ground.

Once he was freed Sam rose to his feet, all the while Dean checked his brother over silently not giving away any indication of a weakness because he still wasn't sure what the full threat level of the room was.

Elena glanced over at Dean, and he was at least sure of _one_ thing, she had made her decision. Dean dropped the flaming paper into a plastic basin half full of water and dirty dishes.

Sam approached Matt. "I'm gonna need that back." He held out his hand for his weapon. Matt Donovan wasn't an idiot and backed away from Sam's reach, but Dean knew his brother, and Sam's intimidation factor wasn't one that was to be messed with. After only a few seconds of staring down the kid Matt lowered the gun and dropped it into Sam's hands.

"It looks to me like Elena Gilbert is martyring herself out _again_," Elena's doppelganger finally snarked an answer to Elena's question, "and the rest of us are just caught in the crossfire _again."_

"Can we do this later?" Stefan had gotten to his feet, a blooming bloodstain on his gray shirt the only indication that he had been stabbed at all. Elena moved towards him; Dean watched as she didn't touch him, but the concern in her eyes was evident.

The kid's (or rather however hell the many years old he was), turned to Dean and Sam. "You're clearly not above killing us, and we're more than capable of killing you-"

"Don't sell us short," Dean retorted. "We're more than capable of killing your vampire asses too-"

"Which leaves us at a stalemate," Stefan returned, with a calmness that Dean wanted to smack off of his face. "So how about we ceasefire for a moment and lay this all out? Why'd you pose as FBI agents?"

"Why you pose as people?" Dean returned. "You think no one's gonna notice that some of the locals are a few quarts low?"

Stefan didn't respond to that. "What do you know about Damon?"

"Only what your master cover up sheriff let me know, Dean retaliated. "Believe me, if we knew that you and your brother and your associates were vampires, we would've been less subtle about the way we handled things."

"Hunter's are so _cocky-"_ Elena's double said, in almost a bored sounding kind of tone.

"No one asked you to talk, Katherine," Sam snapped to the woman.

"Funny," 'Katherine' said, eyeing up Sam. "You never asked me to keep my mouth shut before."

Dean made a wide eyed look at both of them. "I'm sorry, you two know each other?"

"She was a Vamp Samuel and I tracked in Chicago back in 09," Sam responded, not taking his eyes off of Katherine Pierce.

"And by _tracked_ your brother here means '_manipulated through sex'_."

Dean cut Sam a look that was half disgusted, half 'what the hell?" as to the vampire's confession about Sam. She was balls out insanely attractive, undead predatory species or not. But still the thought of the line Sam crossed, that Dean hadn't heard of him crossing since those dark days with Ruby, it wasn't exactly sitting well with him.

"We put her down with Dead Man's Blood," Sam ignored Katherine's remark, and ignored Dean's disgust. His brother had no room to talk about doing such outlandish kinds of things.

"Which didn't work; _obviously."_

Sam had forgotten what a live wire Katherine Pierce's mouth could be until the second he heard her open it again.

"Alright, that's enough," Dean growled, pointed the razor sharp blade of his knife at Katherine. "I don't know what kind of game your little nest of friends are trying to pull bitch, but your next words better be merit worthy, or you're going to lose your ability to talk real fast."

"That goes both ways," Stefan growled in a dead panned sounding voice. He took a swipe at the puddle of blood on his shirt like it was a small bleeding paper cut. "The only thing that's keeping me from ripping both your throats out is the fact that Hunters _lie_ about things and I need to get the truth out of you-"

"We wouldn't waste time lying to a bunch of vamps," Dean snapped.

"And we're just supposed to _believe_ that's true?" Elena Gilbert was young, probably only 18, and Vampire or not, it was evident in her voice. She walked over to Dean with a click of heeled boots.

"You believe what you want Bella Swan, it's still the truth." Dean watched Elena like she was a predatory species. "And personally I don't care about the trust issues of a Vamp-"

Katherine Pierce looked at Dean incredulous. She was Elena Gilbert's carbon copy, only with thicker hair and more sluttiness. "Hunters come into town less than a_ week_ after Damon is taken, and we're just supposed to believe that you two know absolutely _nothing_ about it or this creepy Augustine Vampire that's allegedly running around-" Katherine dropped off her words when a look passed over Sam's face that he couldn't hide in time. She cocked her head at him. _"_Oh wait _that's _right, you _do _know something_-"_

Sam hadn't heard that name in years. But the moment it was uttered from Katherine's mouth, the memories behind the name. "Shut up!-" Sam jerked Katherine's arm and placed the blade at her neck, able to do so surprisingly quickly, pointing the knife blade to her throat.

Sam's knife was jerked out of his arm and he was flung against the opposite wall, back ramming into a structural wooden support beam behind the bar. Stefan was inches from his face, fangs retracted, squeezing all the air out of his throat like he was juicing an orange.

"_Sam!"_ Dean shouted out his brother's name, finally using his true name for the first time since he had come into the bar. He aimed his gun at Stefan's back, knowing that it wasn't a lethal shot, but a bullet straight through a Vampire's heart would do more than just sting him. He pulled the trigger, his shot was thrown high by Elena Gilbert knocking him to the ground. The bullet winged off a rafter roof and a second later he heard Sam grunt from where it made contact somewhere on him.

Dean's anger turned bright red, but was halted by Sam's next words:

"_I know where your brother is,"_ Sam gasped out to Stefan from the pressure on his neck. He felt blood pouring down the front of his right leg from where Dean's bullet had grazed it. "_Kill me and you won't," _Sam grunted out another breath, feeling his consciousness slipping, but he saw the shift of the look on Stefan's face like a lose river rock about to damn up the last remaining access through a blockage in the water. "_You want me, or him?"_

Sam felt his neck being released like a noose had been dropped from a hanging rope. He fell to the ground gasping. A second later Dean was hauling him to his feet amidst the glares of the multiple vampires in the room.


	5. Chapter 5

**CHAPTER FIVE**

"_If a man has something once, always something of it remains."_

_~Ernest Hemingway_

_**xxxxxXxxxx**_

Damon's consciousness came back to him in blinks. He found his palm congealed in lake of dark red to the stone floor of his cell. His head was filled with a crushing pain He groaned, moving his arms up to cradle his head and saw the source of the blood: a fresh vertical cuts that ran down both arms from his elbows to his wrists.

He pulled back his arms in unconscious examination, the blood pulsating like lights in a laser show, hunger crept and crawled out of his stomach. The blood was half dried, thick as pudding, but it was the _smell_ that Damon noticed first, the same heady aroma that came to his senses whenever he smelled a willing candidate for his feeding.

He tried to lower and hide his arms but his movements opened the cuts, leaking blood down arms and before he could stop himself, he lapped at the dark stains, biting into his flesh.

He coughed, and threw himself against the wall, shoving a hand down his throat and vomited out all that he had just swallowed down his jeans. He coughed and gaged again, spilling the last vestiges of the blood along with corrosive stomach acid.

"_Not enjoying your dinner 20151?" _Wes was leant up casually against the reinforced bars of Damon's cell, boldly within arm's length of Damon like he was superior in the knowledge that Damon couldn't touch him. A thick sterile bandage was taped to Wes' neck.

Damon coughed again and growled hatefully at Wes. "You're a sick freak-!"

"I'm a philanthropist," Wes returned simply. "Protecting the world from monsters like you."

"You capture and torture people and get _off_ on it," Damon groaned, using the concrete wall to pull himself to his feet like he was climbing a ladder. He let go of the wall, but fell forward again and caught himself hard and painfully on his hand. a"Who's the real monster?"

"_People?"_ Wes spat the word out like he had chewed rancid milk. "No Damon, your kind is an _abomination,_ an over populated pack of rabid animals circling a civilized society; anything I do to remedy the problem makes me a hero."

Damon blew off a painful sounding laugh, walking slowly towards Wes, the cuts on his arms dripping blood down his finger tips. Wes didn't back up, but still moved to the other side of Damon's cell. "Why don't you tell me that without all the reinforced steel bars?"

"Unfortunately my busy schedule forces me to delegate such menial tasks to my interns," Wes walked down the dark hallway, out of Damon's sight, there was the sounds of a cell door being opened and soon he was back in front of Damon, with the girl from the lab.

Her long hair covered her face; the front of her dress was a stain of bright red blood, and her bare feet stumbled over the floor even though the concrete was smooth. Wes grabbed her chin and forced it up and she flinched away from the florescent bulbs overhead.

"She transitioned an hour ago," Wes stroked the girl's hair. "Fed her myself," he pulled the bandage away from his neck, revealing a half congealed scab with dried stains of blood on the flesh of his neck.

The girl turned to the smell of the blood, the veins behind her eyes darkened and spider webbed out. She moved to lunge, but she did so stumbling, falling against Wes like she was drunk. "What's happening to me?!" her voice was high and scared.

"It's okay sweetheart," Wes pulled her up like she was a child sick with the flu. "It's just the vervain; don't worry, you're doing fine." He turned her head with his hand towards Damon and her breath hitched in fear at the sight of him and all the blood.

Damon jerked out of the fog of his pain when he heard his cell door being unlocked. "What the hell are you doing?"

Wes had the girl in front of him, using her as a shield as he slowly swung the door open. "As much as I want Stefan to be the first true test run of my experiments on you, I need to make sure your new 'abilities' are up to standard before I let you and your little brother have your reunion." He drew out a knife and slashed the girl across the elbow, opening a huge gash into her skin, she screamed and he threw her into the cell, slamming the door shut.

"Don't worry Damon," Wes quickly locked the door before Damon could reach it. "I calculated her dosage of vervain exactly," he glanced down at his watch. "The last of it should be out of her system, _now_." He looked back up to both of them like he was watching two former students of his at their first real job, yanking the heavy key from the door. "Don't say I never gave you anything."

Wes vanished down the hallway just as Damon lunged at the bars.

Behind him the girl was crying, clutching at her arm. "Why is this happening to me?" The cut was substantial, leaking thickly from her arm pattering to the floor, "I don't understand-"

The smell of the girl's blood enveloped the cell and flooded up Damon's nostrils, his fangs retracted, his breathing came harder. He gripped the bars as tightly as he could, they screamed under the force he used. But in the end the gnawing, starving hunger tore at his stomach and turned him around.

The girl backed away at the predatory look in his eyes. "_Please-what's happening?!_"

"You're a vampire-" Damon approached with a predatory slowness, the parts of him that still made him human screaming at him, trying to force his steps back, but the parts of him that made him a half starved vampire pulled him forward. "Wes fed you my blood, then he killed you, then he gave you _his blood _to complete the process."

The girl shook her head with a strangled sob, not believing what he was saying. She backed away more, crying out when she ran out of room to move and hit the concrete wall behind her.

"I can't compel you," Damon was now right on her, the smell of her blood overpowering. "But I need you to stand very. still. Understand?"

The girl shook her head and started to sob. "Please don't hurt me, _please don't hurt me!"_

Damon's body heaved on a breath as he felt her trembling even without touching her. "I'm sorry," his fangs retracted completely and he lunged at her arm.

She screamed and pushed him away, managing to throw him off of her and into the opposite wall of the cell. She ran from the corner, but had nowhere to run except the other corner of the eight by eight foot cell.

Damon was weakened by pain and torture but he was still over a century older than her. He grabbed her arm and slammed her up against the wall of his cell right next to where he had scratched his initials and tick marks into the concrete.

He lunged at her neck, biting into her carotid, and her horrendous screams echoed around his cell.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Elena watched the man who had moments ago pointed a gun at her neck, and who had stabbed Stefan in the chest without blinking pull the other man he called his brother to his feet, rolling up his pant leg and swearing at what he saw. He tore a piece off of his own shirt and pressed against the bloody hole to stem the flow. The smell of the man's blood was thick in up her nose.

Elena watched this, still feeling the maw of the Hunter's gun at her back, the injury that was meant for Stefan bleeding out all over the taller man, the one that the other called 'Sam'. She walked towards them, feeling Stefan grab her arm to pull her back, but she pulled out of it and continued until she was standing right in front of the two men.

She bit into her wrist and held it out to 'Sam' "Here, my blood can heal you."

"What the hell are you doing?" Katherine demanded.

"If he really knows where Damon is then we're on the same side for right now," Elena snapped back to her doppelganger.

"They're Hunters Elena!" Katherine insisted. "We're _never_ on the same side!"

"You need to back off!-" the other man growled at Elena and then Katherine from where he stood over Sam. "We're not doing any vamp blood Cure-All's," he produced a knife and lit it red hot with his lighter, removing the cloth and placed it against Sam's skin.

Sam roared, but only slightly, like he was used to this kind of pain. The knife came away and the wound was now black like it had been seared, it was soon rewrapped. There came a tense moment between the two men, like the one who was injured didn't know what to say to the one who had fixed him up.

"What do you know about Augustine?" Elena asked as the black hot wound disappeared behind the Hunter's pant leg.

"You don't get to ask the questions-" the shorter of the two growled at her, which wasn't really _short _ at all because he stood well over six feet tall. His pointed his knife blade at her, still glowing from the heat of the flame.

"It's a covert society-" Sam said, taking a stance with one arm resting on his jeans. The other hunter shot him a glare for talking at all. "They experiment on vampires-"

"Ask him _how_ he knows this," Katherine cut in. "Because he and his cue ball partner tried to sell my alleged dead hot vampire body to them back in the day."

Elena's face contorted into confused shock, so did Stefan and Matt's the latter of whom was standing guard at the door to the service entrance of the bar to keep customer's from coming in.

"What do you mean _experiments?" _Stefan returned.

"He means _torture,"_ Katherine clarified. "I never met the Augustines' personally, but I heard the rumors. Rich family, likes to vivisect vampires in secret labs, see what makes them tick, they rely heavily on donations for their test subjects." Katherine flicked her eyes over to Sam when she said this. "Luckily for me, I came around in time to take out my transport team before I reached the Magic Kingdom."

Stefan's expression fell away from confusion and became shock instead. The images that had been flashing across his head becoming clearer, the gray wall, the bars, the initials in the cement, Damon's pain filled voice. The shock became full on hostility and turned his attention onto the tall Hunter. "You handed over Damon to this place?"

"He's not telling you anything," the shorter Hunter snapped, pointing a finger in Stefan's face, close enough for Stefan to snap off with his fangs.

"Look I trust you as much as you trust me; but I'm not the one who sold out your brother-"

"_Sam-"_

"Dean," Sam's voice was booming and insistent to the second man that he had finally named. "Augustine didn't just experiment on _existing_ vampires; when they couldn't get enough for their weekly quota, they mass produced backups. _Innocent_ people, turned into Vamps to be cut apart like bio frogs-"

"Jessie," Elena cut in remembering Jessie, attacking Damon, being engineered to feed on Vampires. She turned to Stefan. "He said Wes kept him locked up for two weeks in his lab, and did tests on him; he almost killed Damon-" Elena's voice fell away at the implications of exactly what that meant if Damon was now in Dr. Maxfield's hands. She turned back to face Sam. "Do you know where this place is?"

"It would have to be some place remote-" Stefan said before Sam could even speak. Stefan closed his eyes briefly, trying to piece together where all the elements of his visions, steel bars, concrete cells, stainless steel labs could fit into society without society knowing about it. "Vampires aren't exactly docile about being held captive; they'd have to be kept in reinforced steel cells, far away from any general populations as possible so no one would hear what's going on-"

The image filtered through his mind as a migraine aura. A dark dank hallway, a girl's face, her screaming, somewhere in the distance his brother's voice. There was no glass to break this time, nothing for Stefan to hold onto but his own hand. Hard pops like gunfire echoed around Stefan's ears.

"_Stefan!" _

Stefan whipped his head instantly to Dean and Sam thinking it was one of them firing off their guns, but Elena didn't move, only looked downward. He followed her horrified gaze to his hand, he had dug his fingers into his palm so tightly that it had dislocated the tarsal bones in his fingers, contorting his hand into a caved in claw formation. He felt Elena close her hands around his, trying to assess what he had done, but he brushed her off this time, walking over to the two men who eyed him like they would kill him at a moment's turn of his behavior.

Which was the same way Stefan was looking at the two of them. "Whatever else you may think of Vampires, I can tell that you're as thrilled about the use of innocent people for scientific experiments as I am about the use of my brother for the same reason." Stefan grabbed his deformed hand and jerked it upwards with a crack, realigning the bones back to their proper position; barely feeling the pain that came from the maneuver.

There was a silence that followed, both the men in front of Stefan staring him down, like opposing soldiers in a battle field.

During World War II, Stefan had driven an ambulance in the battlefields. In the last year of the war, five months before Hitler surrendered to the Allies, he witnessed that same look on the faces of enemy soldiers right before they signaled an aerial attack that blew up his hospital unit tent, killing all 15 wounded men he had been tending too. The explosion had torn his right leg almost completely off, bone and all. His commanding officer had evacuated him and the rest to another unit in the forests of Germany. The surgeons were able to repair his leg; but he was too weak to escape into the woods to feed on any animals; there was blood in abundance all around him, but Stefan did not allow himself to give into the thirst for the blood of his fellow dying soldiers. This resulted in his wounds healing at almost a human rate. He was shipped to Germany, and from there to a hospital in Switzerland, by that time he was half starved. There were no open areas or woods in the city, so he was forced to subsist on the blood of pigeons that came too close to his hospital room window. His daylight ring had been locked away by the hospital staff to 'keep it from being stolen', forcing him to remain indoors, not wanting to risk exposure by wandering out at night. His lack of adequate food kept him from being able to compel the staff into telling him where his ring was. Some of the nuns who ran the hospital nursing staff soon became afraid of the way he watched the birds out the windows sills, and how he avoided the windows and doors during the peak of daylight. They would openly cross themselves in front of him or clutch their rosary beads when he came near them and hurry away, muttering a string of prayers.

The nun's finally forced the hospital head doctor's hand, and forced Stefan out on the first boat bound for America. The ride home bad been hell. He had never sailed a boat in his entire life and killing off any of the crew would have meant he would be stranded at sea. Fish had little to no blood, and the captain's dog was a puppy, not big enough to sate his hunger for very long.

He made it to New York in spring of '46, but by that time the lack of blood had screwed up his body, causing weakness and limping in his injured leg. It made it hard to hunt the fast moving animals in upstate New York. It took a full year to recover his strength; during that entire time he never contacted Damon; feeling his brother's abandonment like a slap in the face; hating Damon for not being there with him like he promised, for making him be alone through all his misery. When his great nephew Joe had called him a years later saying Damon wanted to meet up with them, Stefan had lied and said he was coming; wanting to hurt Damon as much as Damon had hurt him.

But after learning from Damon a year ago _why_ he hadn't joined the war he owed him, more than that, he had to save him, because they were brothers.

"If you two really hunt _everything_ like Katherine says you do. Then you're going to help me find this place down so I can burn it to the ground."


	6. Chapter 6

**CHAPTER SIX**

"_How we were raised was jacked."_

"Sam Winchester"

"Supernatural" Episode: "Bugs"

**xxxxXxxxx**

To say the air was tense hanging out in a bar filled with vampires was like Sam saying that Lucifer possessing him hurt only a minute amount.

Sam palmed the phone in his jacket pocket like having physical contact with it would make it ring faster. The room was so heavy with silence it felt like something was trying to pull the building under.

Dean was leant up against the bar, helping himself to the whiskey from the shelves. Katherine Piece sidled up to him and stole the bottle and Dean glared at her, but had let her take it from. He'd been in enough situations with enough supernatural beings to know when to pick his battles; and he'd take a drunk vamp over a sober one any day, it made them easier to kill.

The vampire leaned up right next him, her breasts not so subtly pressing against his right arm. "This is bugging the hell out you isn't it? Hunters forced to work with vampires."

"Not as much as you're bugging the hell out of me right now." Dean slammed another double shot of whiskey back from the pour spout in the bottle.

Katherine looked affronted. "Wow, I can see where your brother got his smart mouth from," she sounded turned on by her own remark.

"Who is calling you exactly?" Stefan's remark was more demand than question. He was leaned up against a table, arms crossed, standing next to Elena, both looked on edge, particularly Stefan.

"Sorry, I don't give out my personal directory to Vampires." Dean snapped. He wasn't happy having to work with Vamps, they had no loyalties to anyone outside of themselves.

The air grew as tense as a hairline trigger. The vibrating of Dean's phone extinguished it before anything could happen. He pulled it out of his jacket and flipped it open.

"Hey, whatcha got?" Dean pulled away from Katherine who practically shoved herself on him to try and overhear the conversation.

"Where do you think you're going?"

Dean ignored Katherine's question and walked towards the back of the bar towards the service door but Elena blurred by the door and stopped him with a feral look and a hard grip on his arm.

Dean covered his hand over the phone. "You gotta be kidding me!-"

"You're not leaving." Elena insisted.

"_Dean, are you still there?"_

Dean stared down Elena, who, despite being a vampire, still looked very young. "One important fact you're going to need to learn about me _real_ fast is that I take offense to being ordered around-"

"And I'm not letting you walk away," Elena snapped. "Not if you know _anything_ about Damon," Elena shared a glance with Stefan who looked like he was about to back her up by ripping out Dean's throat.

Dean seriously wanted to call the deal off; working with Vampires, with the exception of Benny, was something that went against every fiber in his body. But now that he knew of the existence of such a place, that took _people_ and turned them into experiments, he couldn't just walk away from it.

"_Dean, did you just say _Vampire?" Jody's voice was shrill in his ear. He had given her the key to the Bunker before they left, a contingency plan in case something happened to him and Sam. She had been in Kansas yesterday visiting an old friend, and when Dean called her he found out that she was _in_ the bunker, looking over the books. So he asked her for a favor. "_What the hell are you?"_

"Just tell me what it is," Dean didn't mean to snap as harshly as he did to Jody, but he made up for it in deliberately not saying her name out loud. He knew that the entire bar full of Vampires was listening in, and the less they knew, the better.

"_I found a hit that matches the specs you and Sam gave me," _ Jody pulled down a leather bound Men of Letter's volume labeled '1800-1850' , blowing off half a layer of dust before she set the book on the map carved table._ "Parkesburg, West Virginia, small tourists' trap town. But, back in the 1800's it used to be part of the Underground Railroad, most of the buildings still standing from that era have been converted into museums by the historical society, all except for this one piece of property, the descendants kept it privatized. I looked it up online, it's currently owned by a man named Gerome Maxfield-"_

"Maxfield?" Dean repeated the name, trying to place something. "Why does that-?" He looked over to Sam who shook his head at him, not recognizing the name either.

"Maxfield?" Elena repeated the name too, but with an indication that she _knew _about it.

Stefan looked to Elena "Isn't that the Whitmore Bio Teacher?" He swiveled his head to Dean first, then Sam, waiting, not with bated breath, but with a silence attached to a trigger that would detonate if his answer wasn't met with what he wanted to hear.

Sam had been half listening to Jody and Dean's conversation, and snatched the phone from him. "Hey, is there any reference of Gerome Maxfield's living relatives in this century?"

"_Most likely, but this isn't Google Sam,"_ Jody returned. "_It would take me at least a few hours to find that out-"_

"Never mind, just email me the coordinates to this place, we'll figure it out-"

"_Wait, scratch that, I think I might have found something"_ Jody cut Sam off, coming across a handwritten footnote at bottom of the page she was looking at. "_There's not listings of his _living_ descendants, but there's one of his great great grandmother, a woman named Abilene Rosenbaun, says here her first husband died in a "dishonest" way, her marriage was annulled, and she married Parker M. Richmond in 1853. But there's a part in the footnote how there was some smear against the Richmond name concerning Abilene, so in order to avoid ostericiation in society this Parker guy swapped out his last name for his middle name-Maxfield. They were mostly a generation of teachers-" _Jody paused, like a fact had suddenly struck her. _"Including the most recent, a Microbiology Major from Duke now a professor at Whitmore College of Arts and Sciences."_

"How far is that plantation from the school?" Sam asked Jody, he saw the shift in Stefan's face at the information he had just overheard.

"_About a forty minute drive almost completely through rural wooded areas, easy to move things out in the dead of night without anyone noticing."_

"Thanks," Sam felt the air go from combustible to an explosion and he felt the heat of it licking at skin. "We'll call you later."

"_You better. You boys be careful understand? There's no way in hell I can keep up a house this size."_

"We will." Sam hung up the call.

"That's the place," Stefan said. "The plantation house, that's where Wes took Damon."

"It's close enough," Sam agreed. "No one to see the ins and outs-"

"No it's not that," Stefan cut him off "I was there."

Dean and Sam's gazes met each other in the open air, the look they reserved for when they discovered something that sounded insane, but couldn't be written off because of what they knew.

"Before Virginia seceded from union Damon and I used to visit Parkesburg every summer with our father," Stefan said this in a way that made it clear he wasn't saying it for the benefit of Sam or Dean. "He was friends with a woman named Abilene Rosenbaun; she had one of the largest tobacco plantations in the state- He's there."

"So what are we doing?" Matt Donovan asked.

Dean snuck a glance at the kid like he'd forgotten he was there, "_We're_ not doing anything kid, you and your rabid Apple Dumpling Gang are all going home and thinking about what you've done, _we_," Dean waved a the air in-between him and Sam. "are handling this."

"And you're planning to do that by disregarding the _one_ reliable source who the exact location Maxfield's torture dungeon?" Katherine's voice was condescending, like she was reprimanding a toddler for a mistake with biting sarcasm. "Funny, I thought hunters were supposed to be _smart."_

Dean felt his anger reach the lip of his threshold and spill over it. "Alright, you know what?" He pulled out his silver plated Colt and cocked it at Katherine. "I can't kill you with this, but I promise I'll make it hurt like a bitch if you don't shut your mouth!"

"You want to rescue all those _innocent _little humans the Augustines are turning into vampires for personal gain, and Stefan wants Damon back minus the vivisection. So _maybe_ we should work together on that?" Katherine's voice was haughty, taunting, like she had spent a lifetime of getting what she wanted.

"What kind of deal are we talking about?" Sam asked.

"What the hell Sam?!" Dean cut his brother a look like he was crazy. "What are you, crazy?"

"It's not like it's the first deal you ever struck with a vampire Dean," Sam's words were hard, like a mallet hitting granite. "I don't see why it should be a problem."

Dean felt like Sam had struck him in a direct blow, one that came at him so quickly he was caught off guard. "Seriously? We're doing this _now?"_

"There isn't going to be a later, so it might as well be now." Sam returned, using the words to cut his brother through like a knife blade. He hated himself for it, but at the same time, he didn't. Because the betrayal he felt was deeper than the Marianas Trench. He saw Dean give him a heated, angry, wounded look. And he didn't allow himself to stare at it for long, because otherwise he would be forced to analyze the part of him that still hurt to put such a look on his brother's face.

Dean lowered his bead on Katherine at the same time Sam looked her way. "What kind of deal?" Sam asked her.

Katherine Pierce had this way of looking amused that was balls-scraping-the-pavement-cocky. But instead of delivering it this time, her look was seriously as death. "You come with us to Augustine Headquarters-"

"You're part of an inner circle of vampires," Sam cut her off, testing her motives like he would test a live land mine. "Why would you trust me?" For the first time in almost nine years, Sam didn't say trust _us_, and he felt that shift like a rock falling on his foot.

"Here's the thing, I _don't_ trust you,'" Katherine clicked her heeled boots over to Sam. He towered over her, but she had a superiority that more than made up for her lack-of-even-in-heels-height. "But trust isn't an issue when I'm _using_ you to an ends. The Augustine Project isn't exactly partial to treating Vampires as anything other than science experiments, but if we had a couple of _hunters_ with us, especially the one with such a _stunning _charitable donation record to the cause as you." Katherine looked Sam up and down like she was appraising the price of a particularly ratty chair. "It's our gold membership into the front doors."

Dean cocked his head to Katherine this time, his face scrunching into confusion, going from her to Sam. "What is she talking about?"

"We need to move," Katherine cut in, like Dean was an unruly kindergarten student. "We've already wasted too much time."

"_Sam_-" Dean snapped, ignoring Katherine like she wasn't even there.

"She's right," Sam snapped back. "We need to go-" He began to move past Dean, wincing on the pain from the bullet graze in his leg. But he found his path blocked by Dean's hand gripping his forearm.

"I'm not asking her, Sam," Dean insisted, his voice red hot, tired. Tired of arguing with his brother, tired of the whole damn mess. "You're the one who just preached about there not being a later, so let's hear it?"

The words Sam wanted to say to his brother choked their way up his windpipe, in the end he swallowed them back down. The words he wanted to say, and the ones that he didn't.

Dean felt the silence like it was something alive. "Fine. We'll do it your way then." He released Sam's arm and Sam jerked it from him at the same moment so it was hard to tell who pushed away harder.

"Parkesburg is over two hours from here _Agent_," Katherine returned to Sam, her snark cut into both him and Dean like a knife to already open wounds. "You and your _brother_ have plenty of time to talk in the car."

"We don't know for sure that Maxfield's has Damon _in_ Parkesburg," Elena retorted.

"Are you really that _naive_ Elena?" Katherine snarled at her double like her words could rip her head off and spit it out bloody. "Stefan was _there_ when this place had just barely had its bricks set in mortar, are you so full of Damon that you can't see anything above him?"

There was a heated moment between Elena Gilbert and her mirror image that most likely would have ended with one of them dead. But it was stopped from coming into fruition by Stefan grabbing Elena's arm and pulling her back from Katherine.

"That's enough," Stefan growled to Katherine. "What you said goes _both_ ways," He stared her down, then Elena.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Dean wasn't exactly thrilled with the prospect of having _Vampires_ riding inside his car. He'd sooner hand an angle blade, handle first, over to Crowley and wait for torque of bloody pain. He walked down to where he had pulled the Impala on the chipped concrete beside Matt Donovan's pickup truck. Donovan himself followed behind, who besides Sam, was the only _human_ Dean was leading to, whatever the hell it was they were calling this.

The sky outside had turned the bright orange of mid-afternoon, and across the street from Mystic Grill people were walking around, shopping, eating, oblivious to it all.

The driver's side of the Impala was splashed with a splatter of dust like someone had thrown a bucket of it upon her black surface from a passing car.

Katherine Pierce took one look at the Impala and a scowl caught her face like a hook on her bottom lip. "Seriously? Ever heard of _taste?_"

"I still have my gun Vamperella 2," Dean returned. No one insulted his girl. More powerful beings had tried, including, angels and a Destroyer Hindu Goddess, and Dean took _none _of it. "So how about you get in the damn car?"

"I'm _not_ riding in that hunk of junk," Katherine snapped like she had been asked to eat a pile of dog shit. "If Elena came here on her own, her little Sport's Cooper is parked somewhere, so I'm going for Option B."

"What makes you think that I would want to ride anywhere alone with you?" Elena snapped.

"Two words: _Damon Salvatore."_

"Bite me Katherine," Elena punctuated each word slowly. "Also two words."

"Here's two more words," Dean cut in. "Shut up," he glared at Katherine and Elenea when they both glared at him. "Alright Edward Cullen's with me, Sam rides shot gun with Vampire Katherine and her less annoying shadow."

Katherine glared at Dean like he asked her to chew milk. "What if I changed my mind because I remembered how I'm allergic to smug superiority?"

"Then you're walking," Dean punctuated the words by opening the back door with a squeak. He avoided Katherine's scowl and opened the trunk of the Impala, pulling a machete from the depth of the green army duffel with 7 inch long hammered steel serrated blade and a handle worn with fingermark indentations on the birch wood.

Katherine eyed the blades like they was plastic. "You know Vampires can kill faster than knives?"

"But not faster than hunters," Dean retrieved a second such machete from the duffle before closing the trunk on the bag. He walked towards the driver's side door with the blade out, not fully pointed on any of the vampires, but not completely on the ground either "You and your friends behave, and these stay under the seats, we clear?"

"That goes for you both too," Stefan rounded on Dean and stared him down like he was imaging what Dean tasted like with his insides on his outsides. "If we're calling a temporary truth, then we have to mean it, at least temporarily."

The vampires' in front of him all eyed the blades, and Dean knew that if they wanted too, they could easily have just tried to kill him and take the weapons. But they didn't and whether it was out of fear, or out of a begrudging lose holding to their halfcocked "deal" struck moments earlier, it didn't matter. Either way, Dean wasn't about to analyze the situation for horse's teeth.

He held one of the machettes out to Sam. "Make sure she follows close behind, no pit stops for food." He gave a nod over to Elena who shot him a look that would have been a scowl had she been the kind of person/vampire to do so.

Sam took the machete from Dean, the wood settled into his hand like well kneaded Play-Dough. There was a brief moment when it felt like another time, in a clearing beside an abandoned bridge by an industrial wayside in the days following Lucifer's release from the Cage. Then Sam blinked, and the weight of the present crushed the memories of the past.

"Let's go then," Sam moved towards Elena Gilbert's little Mini Cooper parked up against the Mystic Grill's back wall without invitation.

A handful of yards away Dean opened the Impala door and Stefan Salvatore climbed inside looking as thrilled to be riding with Dean as Dean was to be riding with him.

Matt Donovan watched them all, Hunters and Vampires, particularly the vampires, like they were insane. "You're not _serious_ about this?" his eyes darted to Elena.

"Matt listen, I need you to go back-" Elena stepped over to the blonde teen. "Tell Jer what's going on. But tell him not to come after us."

Matt didn't look happy about what Elena had said at all. "Elena I'm not letting you _wander off_ alone with a bunch of Hunters!-" The look Matt gave Sam and Dean was as volatile as it could be given what they were and what he wasn't.

"Stefan's with me," Elena returned. "I'm not alone-"

"Stefan isn't-"

"I _mean _it Matt!"

Elena's hiss was audible. Sam watched the Vampire stare down her friend with a ferocity that towered over her small physique the way he towered over her little sports car.

"No one else is getting involved okay?" She placed a hand on Matt's forearm, her eyes pleading. "Please, just go-" She turned, the heels of her boots crunched in the gravel of the road. She pulled out the keyless remote to her car and unlocked it.

Through all of this Katherine Pierce rolled her eyes like it was an idiot side show. "I can't listen to this anymore," She opened the passenger side door and flipped up the black leather seat, climbing in behind it, then poked her head out a moment later like a gopher at Sam. "You joining me handsome?"

Sam's response to this was to flip the seat back hard on Katherine's legs, and retract the seat _all_ the way back, to which she gave an audible complaint. He ignored her as he crammed his 6'4" frame into the tiny car, shutting the door behind him.

Elena appeared in the driver's seat across from him a second later. She closed her door, sealing Sam inside with two Vampires who looked exactly alike.

Elena cranked on the engine, which was almost _silent _compared to muscled engine of the Impala. She affixed Sam with a piercing look. "Can we trust your brother?"

Sam felt every moment of the stare that went completely beyond superficial. "You can," He kept the inflection out of the word where he wanted to place it, because being locked in with two vampires iwas not a place to divulge what he was really thinking.

Elena pulled out behind the Impala, oblivious to Sam's internal arguments, following the black car with a Vampire and Sam's brother, inside it.

**xxxxXxxxx**

Both sides of the road were a line of trees. Towering Pitch Pine, and Hemlock that dwarfed fat Cypress Trees blew past the the Impala in silence through the rolled up windows. Sunlight streamed in over the passenger seat, which instead of holding Sam, held a vampire, who stared straight ahead, tapping an enormous gaudy silver ring against the window with bullet-like noises.

Dean gripped the wheel also staring straight ahead, only occasionally stealing glances at Stefan Salvatore. One hand was on the wheel, the other was tight on the machete that rested in-between them on the bench seat like a barrier.

They had been driving like this, Vampire and Hunter, for nearly an hour, following a route from the GPS on Dean's phone because Stefan hadn't given him any directions. The landscape had probably changed from the days the vampire had last been there, but Dean suspected more it was due the fact that said vampire was being a dick.

The heavy tapping of the ring continued on the window pane. Dean's hand grip the machete handle tighter; he wanted to use the blade just to shut the damn noise up. "Hey, _knock it off!_"

Stefan didn't shoot Dean a withering glare, he shot him a _death_ glare. And Dean shot him one right back; the silence that followed was bloody.

"So how do you know this place is still _standing_?" Dean retorted. "According to you, you haven't been there since you were human during horse and buggy days. How do you know it hasn't been plowed over into mini malls, plowed into _other _mini malls by now?"

"Because it _hasn't_," Stefan answered back like that answer explained everything. "We've already established how much we don't trust each other- but apparently a creepy mad scientist is _vivisecting_ my brother-" He removed his eyes from staring into the tree line and stared at Dean instead, "and as someone who _has_ a brother maybe you could wrap your head around the idea that I wouldn't waste my time lying to you."

Dean clenched his jaw so tightly that it felt like his teeth were being pounded into dust. Every vampire he met and had subsequently killed was a self-serving dick; and this one was exactly the same. But there was something in Stefan's growl like tone that made Dean resist the urge to make a bleeding fountain out of his neck with his blade- and that something was the constant references to his brother.

"So I take it you and your brother are close."

Stefan shot Dean a look like he was borderline neurotic for asking that. "We're not _friends_, Dean, there's no need for pretend pleasantries."

"It's called _conversation_," Dean returned. "I thought you were from the age of tea and mundane talking and did that sort of thing."

"Are you close to _your_ brother?" Stefan's question was eerily deadpanned, like he'd drunk a Soprano for breakfast at some point and some of the mob mannerisms had transferred over.

Dean blew off the remark with anger. "Man you're a cocky-son-of-a-bitch. Alright, fine- Why don't you tell me about what gave you your little schizoid episodes ticks back at your mansion because I'm not buying the whole 'car accident' thing your Barbie-Girl friend was spewing. A Vampire doesn't dislocate bones because his side airbag deployed."

"And _why_ would I tell you?"

"Because it's _my_ car!-" Dean snapped. "I'm not above slicing your hands off to kill the silence. But one of my rules for granting temporary amnesty to a vamp is that you answer one of my damn questions!"

There came a dry sounding kind of laugh that for one brief moment sounded so much like Sam the Dean had to resist the urge to throw out a quip that Sam would retort to.

"A two-thousand-year old Immortal Witch staked me and left me to drown for three months in a quarry." Stefan said this almost like a dare, a challenge for Dean to one up him.

Which Dean could have done a millions times over: 40 years in Hell, a year in Purgatory. But Stefan was right, they _weren't_ friends, at best they were enemies in a truce, and Dean wasn't going to give him anything real back to his bating.

"Sounds like it hurt like a bitch."

Stefan dry laughed again.

"What?!" Dean was more frustrated about the fact that this vampire had dared to take Sam's place in the Impala and sound so much like him than about anything that the laugh actually implied. Sam could hate him forever, but that didn't change what he was to Dean. It made Dean want to kill Stefan strictly on principal.

"You have no idea much you sound like Damon." Stefan's face shifted to something, almost resembling human. His dark eyes moved over Dean like he was appraising him. "You know we're not as different as you would imagine, Dean."

"Yeah, we're friggin' frat buddies," Dean returned, not knowing, or _wanting_ to know where this whole conversation was going.

"I spent nearly a century and a half hating my brother for what he did to my life," Stefan went on, basically ignoring Dean completely. "But I've never been able to hate him completely-"

"Alright, _enough_," Dean snapped. "You said it," he waved at the air in between him and the vampire. "_We're not friends_, so don't think your touchy feely emo shit is going to get me to see you as anything other than what you really are-"

"How about what _you_ are?" Stefan threw back. "According to Katherine, your brother sold out a bunch of humans to be turned into vampires for science experiments."

"You shut your mouth about my brother!-" Dean gripped the knife and had it pinned against Stefan's left wrist. "I'm not kidding about you losing a hand!"

Stefan glared at the blade on his arm, like he was going to declare their truce off at the same time that Dean was. But before either Vampire or Hunter could act on their thoughts Stefan's eyes lost focus like he was staring at the inside of his eyeballs, both of his hands shot up to grip his head like he wanted to tear into his skull.

"Hey, _hey!"_ Dean yelled at the Vampire when he jerked into the window once, then hard enough a second time to crack the glass. "What the hell are you doing?"

**xxxxxXxxx**

"This is _stupid!"_ Katherine's voice blared into Sam's ears from the backseat with a shrillness that mirrored scraping an enormous ball bearing against a cheese grater.

Sam had done his best to ignore her, but it was like trying to ignore a splinter stuck in your eye. The gunshot wound at his leg had opened again from the tight quarters he found himself in inside the Mini Cooper. A line of red blood snaked its way down his jeans; it had been flowing steadily like this for the almost two hours they had been driving. The pain wasn't unbearable, he had worse; but it was still a relentless throbbing that he could have lived without.

Sam pressed his palm over the blood stain to staunch the flow, keeping his eyes on both vampires to avoid any attacks to his open wound.

Katherine jerked out from in-between the seats cutting off the satellite radio mid-Top 40's hit. She stared at the blood trickling in between Sam's fingers. "I'm no doctor, but I've been around long enough to know when a wound is _festering_."

"I'm fine," Sam snapped, trying to turn his leg away from Katherine's glaring stare.

Katherine drew closer to Sam and sniffed at his leg. "Smells like the beginning stages of gangrene."

"I said shut up!" Sam barked, snapping his head back to face the vampire. It had taken longer than he would have liked to remember the last time he had seen her face. In that dive in Chicago where he dragged her out to the street to a waiting van. He had stood there and watched as nameless men load Katherine into the van's cargo hold, waving off the offering of a wad of twenties because he felt the bribe was too small. And that was it, he left with Samuel and didn't look back.

Until he met up with a similar van without Samuel a state and a hunt over, and another one after that, and Sam had a few more catches to give away in the dead of night. And the bribes were much, much bigger. And Sam had no soul, so he had no objections. Vampires were parasites, and being paid to eradicate them was still eradicating them.

"She's right," Elena cut into Sam's memories like a pair of scissors. She swiveled her head to him, she was identical to Katherine in looks, except one. Katherine's eyes were old, cynical, angry. Elena still had vestiges of a human being under all the vampire. "It's not getting any better on its own. I can help you-" she took one hand off the wheel and bit into the flesh of her wrist with a sharp 'snap' of her fangs, holding out the bleeding flesh to Sam.

And in that one gesture, no matter how _human_ Elena's eyes looked, Sam was instantly reminded that she was still a vampire.

"Sweet Little Elena Gilbert," Katherine snarked. "My methods aren't as pure as my goody-goody counterpart- if you _die_ Sam_,_ then we lose easy access to get Damon out."

Sam stared at the blood trickling down Elena's wrist, and he was somewhere else, in an alleyway, a nameless hotel room, sucking black blood from Ruby's wrist, her arm, her – "I said I'm fine." he snapped to the mirrored image of the bitch behind him.

The sound of a ringing phone shoved any counter arguments back down everyone's throats. Sam reached into his jacket Dean's name lighting up the Caller ID. He flipped his phone open. "What is it?"

There came a thudding sound like something heavy was hitting the dashboard of the Impala, then the door, then the windows.

Sam's sense went on hyper alert at the noise. "What the hell is going on?"

"_Interview with a vampire is spazing out-Like full on war zone flashback!-"_

The loud crunch of glass breaking ripped away at Sam and exposed the raw nerves underneath. And Sam forgot that he was angry and hurt because of the actions of his brother. "Dean!-"

"What's happening?" Elena had obviously been listening in on the conversation. A wing of dark hair flew out in her movement to turn her head to the phone. "_Stefan-"_

This time it sounded like the glass _shattered, _and the next sound was something that Sam recognized from years of hearing it over and over again.

The sound of a steel blade cutting through the air.

"_STEFAN!"_ Elena screamed so loudly next to Sam it felt a hole had punched through his ear drum.

"Dean!"

"That's _it!"_ Katherine leaned over the seat again, and in another instant Sam felt Elena's wrist shoved into his mouth, her blood sliding down warm in between his teeth.

The car jerked in a hard, angry swerve to the right, a horn blared angrily at them, and rush of wind jerked the car left.

Elena yanked her arm from Sam's mouth and tried to get the car back under control, twisting the steering wheel like a pretzel.

The road was smooth, too smooth like highly polished glass; the tires of the Mini Cooper could barely find traction to stop. The afternoon sun slanted like knives into windows as the car swerved to right itself on the road.

The sunlight was thrown into black ahead of them as the tailgate of the Impala jumped at them from the windshield at only a 15 foot distance ahead of them.

Elena slammed on the brakes, but the Mini Cooper's momentum was still going 65 miles an hour. Sam snatched the wheel from her and turned the car a hard right into a slopped ravine with overgrown grass, a line of sentry power lines, and evergreen trees. The front tires hit the ravine hard before the car tilted sideways and stopped.

Elena's head was flung forward and back from the jerking of the car, and there was a moment when her hands and Sam's hands rested on the wheel.

Sam could hear her heavy breathing in his ears like it was a pounding heartbeat.

The inertia of the car took a moment to settle in Sam's stomach, but once it did he tasted the saltiness of blood staining his mouth. He jerked back to Katherine, who had a line of blood trickling down from the left side of her forehead.

Katherine reached up a hand to wipe at the blood off her hairline, but didn't acknowledge it any more than that.

Sam took one moment to glare every ounce of hatred he had in him at Katherine before he slammed the car door open stepping out onto the grass that slanted at a 45 degree angle from the ravine.

"Sam?" Dean's voice and the squeak of the Impala door fought each other for a yell into the cold air.

Sam stumbled up the grass incline and coughed once but nothing came out. He shoved a finger down his throat, choking, then vomited hard all over the slanted grass.

"Sam!" Dean was now less than half a foot away; he reached out and hauled Sam up by the canvas of his jacket. "Hey, _hey!"_

Through the pounding in his ears Sam heard as Elena called out Stefan's name, but it was all background noise as he coughed harder to encourage his vomit to come out. He heaved once more and stared down at the wet regurgitation on the grass, it was slick, and completely clear. He beat his hand against his knee angrily.

"Sam!" Dean's voice was insistent, demanding. "What? Talk to me!"

Sam raised the barrel of his hostility from off the ground and aimed it point blank at the face of Katherine Pierce. "What the hell did you do?" Sam spat at her.

"I saved your life," The blood on Katherine's skin glowed as red as night shade berries. She eyed the puddle of vomit on the grass. "You can't purge off Vampire blood sweetness_. It's fast acting_-" her breath blew out as a haze of smoke in the sunlight. "I told you, if you die, you won't be of any help to us-"

Sam grabbed Katherine by her wrist and pinned her against Elena's car, bending her body almost completely backwards over the roof of the Mini Cooper. "You sick. _bitch!"_

"Sam, _Sam!"_ Dean grabbed Sam by his arms, yanking him off of Katherine. Not because he had suddenly decided to care for her; but because they were too exposed on the roadside in broad daylight for what looked like an attack on a human woman. "Hey!- Look at me! That's enough!"

Sam jerked himself out of Dean's grasp, angry at Katherine and his brother in equal measure. He turned away from the scene, and it was only then that he noticed that Dean had a leaking of blood down his neck, and he was grasping his machete that was coated in a stain of blood all along its sharp edge.

Across the divide from one Vampire to another, Stefan stood beside Elena, a jagged gash ran along the latter Vampire's shoulder, cut clean through his shirt and his mouth was stained in blood. Sam stared at where the blood began on Dean's neck, and where it ended in the Vampire's mouth.

Dean didn't acknowledge the blood that clung into the short hairs on his head like sticky jam. He swept the knife around the group of vampires circling him and Sam, ending the machete's momentum with its blade pointed squarely at Katherine. "You try anything with my brother again you self-serving scank and this deal is going to end bloody starting with your jugular!" he took a predatory step towards her. "You _got that?"_

Katherine stared Dean in the face, not coldly, but with an understanding that was so ancient that it was more calculating than feeling. "I always get threats." Her dark heavily eye-lined eyes stared up at him, then batted over to Elena. "What's your problem?"

"Are you _serious?"_ Elena's voice was shrill beside Stefan Her boots crunched on the grass, avoiding the puddle, but eying it like it was about to illustrate her next words. "You could've _killed _us!"

"You're a vampire Elena, you can't die in a car crash," Katherine said this like she was bored, looking up Sam like she had done the very first time he came across her. But unlike that time he could not clinically analyze away the way her eyes stripped him apart like she was deboning a chuck roast. "And _Sam_ here would've died with vampire blood in his system, it was all calculated-"

Sam's rage boiled over and spilled into hot, billowing steam. "Don't give me any more of a reason to kill you!"

"Alright, here's wants going to happen," Dean swiped at the blood on his skin, transferring the blood stain to the handle of his machete as he switched the weapon from his right to his left hand, pulling out his Colt. He swept silver gun around the lot of vampires. "The next one of you to pull a vamp trick gets this emptied into his face, and this," he waved the machete at them. "lopping of what's left."

Dean was standing in ring of vampires that could easily snap his neck if they wanted too. But Dean had tortured and killed dozens, _hundreds_ of dozens of creatures worse than this small vampire faction. And if it came down to it, he would not let the end come about without three dead vampires on the roadside.

"Now get in your damn car and let's go," Dean waved at the sideways Mini Cooper with his gun. He didn't wait for the approval of the blood suckers in front of him, and started to move back towards his Impala.

And he was stopped by Sam's hand on his arm. "Dean-"

Sam had barely _talked_ to him outright in the last week, so Dean was almost not able to process what Sam was doing. But then he felt the way Sam jerked his arm, the pull going forward towards something in front of them.

A halo of sunlight blinded Dean in the first few seconds he turned towards the road they had yet to drive on. It swayed like a wave back around and into a group of white pine trees, a hemline of power lines hugged the curves of the road.

A moving dot emerged over the first wave of the sun weathered asphalt. As the dot drew closer it grew from blackness into a shape swathed in leather and denim walking towards them; not casually, but like a guard on duty.

The man's face was smooth, unmarred by any facial hair, or any _hair _at all except for thin eyebrows above dark eyes. His clothes stunk like he'd washed them in a swill of rain water and the dirt of the forest floor. But the look he gave Sam and Dean pierced through any other exterior aspects meant to draw an image of intimidation.

"Gentlemen," The, Vampire the one known to Sam and Dean as the Alpha Vamp, stared them over like he imaged what they tasted like with their veins emptied into his mouth. "This is an unexpected treat."


	7. Chapter 7

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

"_Sometimes, I think the things I remember are more real than the things I see."  
_

~ Arthur Golden, Memoirs of a Geisha

**xxxxXxxxxx**

_Parkesburg, Virginia_

_1853._

"_How much longer is it?" Stefan leaned forward in the seat, making the Clarence carriage rock like a boat in the water. _

_His question was nearly drowned out by the heavy clip clop sounds of the horses' hooves on the dirt of the road._

"_Patience," Giuseppe Salvatore chided from his tufted black leather seat across from his youngest son. Giuseppe's dark blue silk suit was protected from the dust the horses kicked up by a black riding cape. "We're nearly there, a mere 15 minutes tops."_

_Stefan's eyes widened like his father had just told him that his favorite Hobby Horse in his nursery was going to be burned for sport. "You said that we were _nearly _there!" _

"_We've covered more than half the distance Stefan," Giuseppe returned. "That is more than nearly there."_

_Stefan took this news as well as any seven-year-old would, with petulance. "What if Ms. Abilene ate all the lemon tarts without me?"_

"_She _hasn't_ little brother," Damon insisted from his seat next to their father. At 14 he was now considered old enough to wear a suit in the same style as Giuseppe. It was minus the riding coat, but compared to Stefan's short breeches and short sleeved button up shirt Damon looked very much the part of the older brother. "She only has the cooks bake them when you come over, she's doesn't love being a sour puss as much as you Stef."_

"_Don't call me _Stef_ Damon!" Stefan harrumphed. _

"_Why?" Damon asked over the bumping of the carriage. "It _is_ your name after all, isn't it?"_

"_It is _not!"_ Stefan shouted back._

"_That is enough!" Giuseppe snapped at them both. His eyes were half covered under the brim of his tall, black hat but they still rose up sternly. "Damon, what have I told you before about your insolent behavior?-" His eyes bore into his teenage son's beside him on the bench style seat. _

_Damon suddenly felt half the age of his younger brother under his father's deathly stare. No matter how hard Damon tried he was never able to please his father. It seemed that everything he did, and that seemed to include breathing and walking around, was deemed wrong. "I wasn't trying to be insolent father," Damon's face broke into an attempt of a smile to try and explain away his next explanation. "I was just trying to be funny, Stefan's just tired from the trip; he usually likes it when I call him Stef."_

"_Your brother is a child, Damon!" Giuseppe barked out to his son. "I don't hold him to understand the meaning of propriety. _You _on the other hand, are nearly 15-years of age, and yet you must be reminded daily of that fact!" The anger in his stare was hot enough to melt glass. "Sit with Stefan, Damon. Apparently, you're not much _older_ than your seven-year-old brother so you should join him for the rest of the ride."_

_Giuseppe's words cut into Damon like glass shards; he did not answer with an obligatory 'yes father' but he did do what he was told, moving overand landing hard beside Stefan on the opposite carriage seat._

_Damon was now blocking the view Stefan had up to that point of the scenery out the carriage's window. The trees and landscape were now hidden away by Damon's curls and hurt looking expression._

_Stefan scooted the inches between him and Damon until they were gone and shook his brother's arm hidden under the silk of his suit. "Damon, I didn't mean to-"_

_Damon felt Stefan plucking at his arm. He turned away from the never ending parade of evergreen trees and met the expression on his younger brother's face. "We'll be there soon enough Stefan, don't worry." He offered no more words of comfort to Stefan than this, but raised his arm to lay across his little brother's shoulders, feeling Stefan's smaller body jostle and jump in time with the carriage that bumped along the road._

_The carriage traveled on like this for those remaining fifteen minutes in silence, taking them through the center of Parkesburg with its sprawling brick two story buildings and busy streets. They rode past the livery with sounds of horses snorting behind their fences, general stores, the grand bank with its golden sign hanging out front, the even grander town hall where important looking men tipped their hats to Giuseppe. The carriage drove away past all this commotion to a road that had been formed into the dirt ground by constant horse travel rather than pebble or brick. _

_This road lead them away from the cluster of buildings and past a field as large as an ocean, bright green with tobacco plants._

_Shapes moved in and out of that greenery dressed in washed out canvas, hacking away at the base of the plants w with machetes. As the Clarence carriage passed by, some of the men and women raised their heads up to the sound of the rolling wheels. They were snapped at by a field overseer and quickly returned to work. The overseer tipped a sun bleached tri corner hat at Giuseppe who didn't return the gesture._

_Stefan stared at this scene from out his window, and even tried to wave at some of the field workers, but none of them returned his wave. He was not nearly 8-years-old years old yet, but he knew better than to ask if the workers liked what they did. Trying to do so before at their own house had gotten him a telling off – one of his first- by his father. So instead he crawled forward, climbing over the mountain of Damon's knees and peered out at the bricked plantation house that rose over all the tobacco plants and over at the people._

_The carriage rounded a curve in the road and the house drew nearer, and nearer, its deep red brick guarded from the roadside by large white roman style colonnades that supported the triangular roof of a shaded portico. On either side of the house stood rows of black birch trees and magnolia trees, their heady blossoms in full bloom. _

_The driver overhead gave a 'whoa' and the carriage rumbled to a stop in front of all those sweet smelling blooms._

_A grand porch took up the length of the entire first floor, and a line of women in black maids uniforms with whimpers on their heads stood soldier straight in lines on either side of the porch. On the set of white steps that led the porch down to the ground stood Abilene Rosenbaun, wearing a dress of blue silk the color of a robin's egg. She waved a hand in the air and smiled widely before descending the steps, holding onto her straw hat with one hand and her full skirt with the other. "You've arrived at last!"_

_Midway down the stairs stood a man in a dark gray butler's uniform and reached out to take her arm to help her down._

_Abilene Rosenbaum was newly a widow, 29-years-old, which made her 'middle aged' by Parkesburg standards. But her beauty bested any of the younger women in town. Long ringlets the color of wheat bending in the summer wind framed a brilliant set of sapphire blue eyes and soft lips that seemed to constantly smile, even with the recent tragic death of her husband. And she had a lively personality that was only matched by her kindness._

_Abilene finally reached the bottom stair, releasing her man servant's hand to make the journey the rest of the way alone, hiking up her skirts to the ankles and hurrying over to the carriage._

_Abilene reached inside and unlatched the carriage door, drawing it open. "I thought you'd never come!" _

"_Ms. Abilene!" Stefan crawled over Damon's lap and flew like a bird until he reached the blue silk of Abilene's dress._

_Abilene laughed and reached her arms around the boy, drawing him tight into a hug. "Oh my dear Stefan!" She set him down and stroked his dark hair. "How are you?" She kissed one of his cheeks, then the other, pulling back to gaze at him. "Gracious; it's only been a single summer and you've grown at least a _foot!"

"_Papa says I grow as fast as the tobacco plants!" Stefan exclaimed with the exuberance that always came when he visited Abilene on her plantation. He and Damon and their papa had been coming there every summer for as long as Stefan could remember; and every year he counted the days until they were able to make the journey again. _

_Abilene laughed again, and this time, she pinched his cheeks. "Your papa is very right my boy," She stood back up to her full height giving a little curtsey to Giuseppe "It is always a pleasure Mr. Salvatore."_

_Giuseppe tipped the brim of his hat towards the woman. "The pleasure is always _mine_ Mrs. Rosenbaun." He smiled, but did not take her hand to kiss it since she wasn't wearing gloves, and it would be unseemly. "I have found the _most _perfect suitor for you, handsome, owns half of the new railway line in Denver."_

"_Mr. Salvatore!" Abilene returned, pretending to be affronted. "I've only been two months out of my black morning weeds!"_

"_Which is two months too long for a woman of your stature," Giuseppe volleyed back. _

"_And what about you Sir?" Abilene returned boldly. "You've been a widower for these past seven years."_

"_Men are allowed such labels longer than women Abilene," Giuseppe said it like he was reminding her of that fact. "I just want to see you taken care off. I'd make an offer myself-"_

_Abilene had finally heard enough, she swatted Giuseppe with a bare hand. "You are being brazen Mr. Salvatore," her eyes shown with mirth as she set her arms about Stefan's shoulders. "I appreciate the offer Sir, but I know that you will need a better mother than I for these two darling boys." She stroked Stefan's dark hair and he giggled at the tickling sensation it produced._

"_As you wish madam," Giuseppe's smiled, but it faded away when he saw Damon standing there, hands behind his back having done nothing to add to the conversation. "Have your manners escaped you, Damon?"_

_At the stinging retort Damon's hands immediately uncrossed from behind his back. "My apologies Ms. Abilene." He took her hand, kissing it once, not noticing the way his father scowled at him for the brazen gesture._

"_Think nothing of it my young Mr. Salvatore," Abilene said the words proudly. She surveyed Damon the same way she did Stefan. "My goodness Damon, you are becoming quite a handsome young man."_

"_Thank you ma'am," Damon returned with a genuine smile. Stefan wasn't the only one who loved the woman dearly. She had become almost like a mother to them both; Damon more so then Stefan since Stefan barely remembered anything about their mother. _

_All the time they had been talking, Abilene's man servant stood beside her like a silent shadow, keeping himself there, but out of the conversation and out of the way until he was called upon._

_This moment came with a swish of Abilene's full gathered skirt. "Darius, help the driver with the Salvatores' bags." Abilene's words were softer than an order. 'Darius' had been on her plantation for the past five years, and had been faithful in his duties towards the woman. _

_Darius cut a formidable figure standing beside Abilene in her blue silk. His skin was dark pecan brown, and his head was shiny like a billiard ball under the brim of the hat that he tipped towards Abilene with a "yes Ms. Abilene."_

_There was something in the way Darius said her name and the 'just-longer-than-it-should-have-been-smile' that he gave towards her that gave Damon several moments of paused observation. He had become proficient in knowing how to watch and observe situations before he involved himself in them so he wouldn't be torn apart by his father's barbed tongue. He was not his father's deemed favorite, he would never be. That title would forever be given to his "Golden Boy" little brother._

_Stefan released himself from Abilene's arms and ran to a side paddock where several roan and chestnut colored mares grazed on grass and clover. He climbed the fence in his short breaches and stockings, straddling the post. He held out his hand, and clicked with his tongue between his teeth to the nearest mare who munched a tuft of grass close to the fence and ignored him._

"_Damon, she's fat!"' Stefan turned, teetering on the fence like a wobbly ladder. _

"_Not fat little brother," Damon could never hate his brother's 'Golden Boy Status' it's not like he asked for it. He cared very much for Stefan. Damon stepped off the path to join his brother by the fence, leaning his elbows on it. "See how round her belly is?" He pointed to the mare's round stomach that nearly touched the grass below her. "She's heavy with a foal, Stef."_

_Stefan's eyes grew saucer like at the declaration. "Really?"_

"_Your brother is right young Master Stefan," Darius' shiny black books crunched on the gravel of the drive. He claimed a spot a foot away from Damon and stared at the chocolate brown Quarter Horse. "She was sired to our Appalachian stallion, that foal will be a very sturdy work animal when it comes."_

"_But how'd it _get_ in there?" Stefan returned with all the curiosity of a child who didn't understand such things._

_The line between what Damon was and what Darius was blurred as they both shared an amused look over Stefan's short stature._

"_I'll tell you all about it in a few years," Damon returned._

_Stefan was no appeased by this offering. "But I want to know now!"_

"_Lunch is laid out in the parlor boys!" Abilene called out from where she now stood on the porch with Giuseppe. "Let's not let all the Kitchen's delicious lemon tarts go to rot!"_

"_Come on little brother," Damon pulled one of Stefan's arms off the fence, wrapping it around his neck, then the other. Stefan completed the gesture by clinging his legs around Damon's waist like a monkey._

_Damon carried Stefan piggy back style up the drive towards the porch. Darius walked ahead of them, running up the stairs quickly a few moments later to take their brown traveling suitcase out of Abilene's hands._

"_That's _my_ job Ms. Abilene." Darius gently pried the bag's handle from her grasp._

_Abilene didn't look affronted, she actually smiled. "You are too good to me Darius," there was a hidden moment that Damon wasn't supposed to see, but from where he was, he did. After Abilene complimented Darius she reached out a ghost of a hand and rested it on his wrist too long for a woman to her servant, the look in her eyes had shifted as well. So had the one in Darius'._

_The entire moment happened in under three seconds and was soon drowned out by the sounds of Darius hefting all three suitcases under his arm and carrying them through the opened door. _

"_You really want to know about these things Stef?" Damon called out over his shoulder to Stefan's clinging form._

"_Yes!" _

_Stefan's voice rang like a struck bell in Damon's ears. "It's not at all what you think it is. The real reason Ms. Abilene hasn't accepted father's offers for suitors is because of Darius."_

"_That's not about the horse!" Stefan protested loudly._

"_I'm trying to tell you something you dolt!" Damon growled, not angry, just a tad impatient. He lowered his voice and whispered his next words. "Ms. Abilene and Darius have been carrying on affair for a while now."_

_Stefan's eyes went wide at the very notion Damon's words had planted in his head. "But he can't!" He nearly chocked Damon with his hands around his neck. He was only seven, and may not know what 'relations' were yet, but he understood about their society. "He's a negro!"_

"_Keep your voice down!" Damon hissed, slowing his pace so that they were allowed a few moments more to speak candidly before they reached the porch and their Father's forever constantly alert sense of hearing. "Darius is still a man Stefan," Damon stopped walking completely and craned his head to stare at his brother's face inches behind his own. "Just because other people chose not to see it doesn't make it less so to Ms. Abilene. It doesn't work that way."_

_Abilene smiled at the boys when she saw that they were finally drawing closer to the house. She turned with a swirl of her skirts and entered the house, throwing a remark over her shoulder about some new drapes in her parlor to Giuseppe as she passed him._

"_How does it work then?"_

"_Boys!" Giuseppe barked to them both stopped on the path. "Ms. Abilene is waiting!"_

_Damon hefted Stefan's weight more onto his shoulders and resumed his walking. "Not a word of this to father, understand? Remember you _like _Darius. And if anyone else found out about this he would be in severe trouble."_

"_I don't understand enough to know what's going Damon!" Stefan retorted in a loud whisper._

_This proclamation made Damon snort a laugh, he loosened one of his hands and reached back to ruffle up Stefan's hair. "Come on, Stef, you're lemon tarts are waiting." Damon ran the rest of the way to the porch and up the stairs, Stefan's laughter pouring in his ears._

**xxxxXxxxx**

Parkesburg, _West _Virginia

2014

The stone corridor was silent except for the clunking sounds of Wes's footsteps on the stone inlay underneath him. The tunnel perspired in the arches above him from the humid air of the cells. There hadn't been much of a way to build ventilation into the cave when the tunnels were originally used, first to house slaves, then to _hide_ run-away slaves on the Underground Railroad. There were a few air holes here and there, but nothing substantial. And after the conversion by the Augustine's, the Maxfield ancestry and Augustine scientists didn't want to the resulting 'smells' of their experiments attracting the attention of the townspeople. Wes had been doing experiments down here for almost 5 years, and had actually gotten use to the constant smell of blood.

Row upon rows of empty cells greeted him. The project hadn't had a decent test subject in years. Most of them, like Jessie, had not lasted long after their transformation, killed off or unable to tolerate the catalyst drug for longer than a week before dying. When Wes found out who Damon was, he was relieved to begin again, on a subject that the Augustine's gloated about.

The first thing Wes noticed when he approached Damon's cell was white, then red. The girl's body lay in a heap in the center of the floor, her curls soaked red in a pool of her own blood, bite marks ran down both her wrists and shoulders, her eyes were half open and glassy, and her neck was twisted at a crooked angle.

Damon was crouched a foot away, blood staining his gray shirt. His head hung down, revealing a greasy mess of shorn black hair.

Wes approached the cell. "How was dinner?"

Damon raised a solitary hand and flipped Wes off before his head raised up slowly, his face was a mess of the girl's blood. "What the hell do you get out of this?" Damon's voice was low and weak sounding, but hostilely angry. "Half the world doesn't even know that vampires _exist_, it's not like they're going to drape a Peace Prize metal around your easily breakable neck."

"I get to be on the ground floor of ending the parasitic vampire race, Damon. It's more glory than _ten_ Nobel Prizes." Wes voice rang with zealousness. "For too long the balance has been tipped against us by your kind, I'm finally evening the playing field."

"And what about your little guards? "What do they get out of helping you?"" Damon flickered his gaze over to the girl's body, her screams still wrung in his ears. Yes he had killed mercilessly before, and would continue to do so until someone drove a stake through his heart and ended his second existence. But being a psychopathic dick who liked to get _off _on vampires killing and feeding on each other was a role that Damon would never take from Wes.

Wes didn't answer Damon's question, and instead pulled out a black handgun and aimed it at the bars. "I need to dispose of your sloppy leftovers Damon, so I'm going to need you to shut up now."

Damon rushed at the gun, but was unable to reach it before Wes fired two bullets at his chest. Damon coughed, and roared and dropped backwards on his knees.

Wes changed out a clip in his gun then, reached into his lab coat and removed a set of keys, twisting a brass skeleton one to release the lock on Damon's cell. The reinforced metal door swung open with a squeak and Wes stepped inside, gun still aimed at Damon. "Those bullets were wooden, steeped in concentrated vervain. _These-"_ Wes waved his gun in the air. "Are stepped in concentrated Werewolf Venom, a little something I found off one of a Vampire Hunter a few years back. One shot to your heart and you're dead, so nothing fancy understand? I don't want to lose my Patient Zero."

Wes knelt down next to the girl's body and rolled her over onto her back. Her head fell forward with a flop, the entire left side of her face was sticky with blood. Wes pulled the hair back from her face like he was soothing a child who had just woken up from a nightmare. "I gotta say," He ran a hand down all the congealed blood on the girl's neck. "You are _quite _the marksman."

The girl's eyes suddenly snapped open with a gasp that turned into a scream as she lunged at him, and tore into his neck with razor sharp fangs. Wes screamed and pulled back and switched the aim of his gun from Damon to the girl, but he wasn't able to jerk his arm around enough to get in a good shot.

Damon jumped up from his feet and threw Wes to the ground, flinging the girl off of him. He pinned Wes down by stepping on his neck, snatching the gun from him releasing the clip from it, flinging both out of the cell. He turned to the girl who still stood there in bare feet, blood dripping down her face. "Get out of here, run as fast as you can!" Damon reached down and punched Wes hard, once in the face, hearing the 'crack' of his nasal passage breaking. When he looked back up the girl was still watching him. _"Go! Now!"_

The girl backed out a in a stumble, her bare feet slapping the stone floor, but then, like a baby animal learning how to find its feet when a predator was circling its herd, she bolted, her desperate breathing vanishing down the halls.

Damon reached down and snatched up the key ring from where it had fallen by Wes's head. The urge to kill him was strong, to just snap his unconscious neck and be done with it. But a swift death for Wes was too merciful for Damon. He wanted to make him suffer, but more than that, he wanted to get out of this hell hole. He ran out of the cell and slammed the iron door, locking Wes inside with the key.

His body lurched forward from the sting of the Vervain bullets. He felt both of them buried somewhere in his chest and abdomen. He dug into the torn flesh with his fingers, but only got a white hot poker of pain and a scream for his efforts.

The sound of footsteps echoed off of the stone floor about fifteen meters behind him. Damon turned around only once, seeing nothing but empty caves and empty cells. There was a brief moment where he wondered about what had happened to the over a dozen vampires he had been locked in here with in the 1950's. But the need for survival quickly outweighed the need for answers and he ran down the hallway, leaving his cell occupied by another.

**xxxxXxxxx**

"Darius?"

Faces were drawn to Stefan at the mention of a name for the nameless man. Elena and Katherine both looked at him, their eyes instantly wanting to know more. The hunters had the same look, but magnified a thousand fold.

But none of their looks bested Stefan's own. The face in front of him was not possible; he hadn't seen it in almost 150 years.

The man turned away from the hunters, Sam and Dean, and laid them on Stefan. "Master Stefan," Darius' face broke into a smile like he had just come upon an old friend by the roadside. "It has been a long time. Forgive me for staring, but your resemblance to your father is astonishing, it's the only way I was able to recognize you at all. As you dare remember, I haven't laid eyes on you since you were seven-years-old. "

"How the hell is this possible?" Stefan stared at the man, in his modern clothes, still remembering the last time he had seen him. "I watched the overseer kill you-"

"That was his mistake," Darius' smile turned into something older, older than Katherine and his existences combined. "As to how I'm possible, you already know the answer to that," Darius flicked his eyes over to Dean and Sam who stared at him like they were about to flay him alive. "Especially if you're traveling with hunters."

"Enough with the idle chit chat, start saying something worthy of keeping my machete out of your damn neck!" Dean barked in that voice Stefan had heard moments before the hunter had taken a machete and dug it into his shoulder. But Stefan had felt no burning desire to retaliate because that action had come on the heels of him digging his fangs into the man's neck when a flashed image had hit him out of nowhere. At first it was the relentless drowning, but then it became the echoes of a girl's scream, of Damon's voice somewhere near it, not angry, but hurt.

Darius passed a glance over at Dean, then blinked away from him like he didn't deem him worthy in the company that he kept. "I am possible the same way _you_ are possible Stefan; if either one of us were still human we wouldn't be having this conversation-"

"_Hey!"_ Dean roared at Darius, his machete making a resonating sound as it was raised up into the air. "I know you heard me!"

Darius finally acknowledged Dean, and Stefan could see a feral look under his eyes underneath the calm. His eyes flicked over to both of the hunters.

"Dean and Sam Winchester," Darius finally attached a last name to two men, saying the words like had swallowed battery acid. "Unlike Mr. Salvatore, my seeing you both again is most certainly _not,_ a pleasure."

"Yeah?" Sam had taken out a gun and was aiming it right at Darius' face. "We don't love you either. So how about you tell us what you're doing walking around the woods alone?"

"You're keeping company with Vampires Sam, I believe you've lost your right in asking cocky questions."

Darius voice hadn't aged at all, which was a trademark of any Vampire. But up until that moment, Stefan believed that Darius had been killed by Abilene Rosenbaun's plantation overseer when he caught him kissing Abilene through the window of her home. Now, to know that he was a vampire, it was like an explosion rattling through the last vestiges of Stefan's sanity.

"I've always considered you one of the top hunters I've ever had the privilege of using Sam," Darius said this with a cockiness, but one that almost seemed to border on a version of grudging respect. "Don't ruin it by suspecting that I would _ever_ travel alone."

Darrius' words were like a cue to the land. The tree line slopped upwards from the roadside in both directions, and shadowy figures began to spring out from both these sides. There were eight of them of them in all, five men, and three women, walking a slow path down towards them like pride of lions circling prey.

Stefan turned and surveyed the vampires ascending the hillside, Elena did the same beside him, and he felt as the strands of her hair whipped back and forth by his neck from her movements.

"This is all you've got?" Katherine stood her ground amidst the vampires that came so far down the road and halted behind Darius like a Roman sentry awaiting command.

"Katerina Petrova," Darius said Katherine's full name like he was sucking on a honey comb. "We've never had the privilege," his eyes flickered down Katherine's body and back up again. "But your reputation more than proceeds you."

"I don't know you," Katherine snarked back in all her glory despite the fact that she could now be easily ripped apart by a single bite to the neck. "And I know all the important Vampires out there, which means _you're not important enough to know."_

"I could guarantee you of my importance Katerina," Darius returned. "But I didn't come to exchange pleasantries, this is strictly business."

"You set us up for an _ambush_ didn't you?" Dean snarled, turning his machete out from Darius, to Stefan and Elena. "What? You led us out here so we can be vamp bait for your friends?" The hunter growled in his throat, angry, at Stefan, but sounded angrier at himself. He stared at Stefan with a hostility that not even Damon could muster. "I knew I should've killed you when I had the chance!"

"As usual you get too far ahead of yourself Dean," Darius said it like they were almost old friends. "You over estimate your ability to see the forest for the trees-"

Stefan was in no way Dean Winchester's old friend, or old _anything_, but he could tell that Dean did not take Darius' words lightly.

"You shut your mouth!_"_ The blade was removed from being aimed at Stefan, and was aimed again at Darius.

"I am in no way in league with Stefan or his little harem," Darius cut in, reverting his look to Dean like he was an errant orphan child who tried to climb into his sleek Packard. "Just because we're of the same origins doesn't mean that we share confidence."

"And we're just supposed to _believe_ that?" the words came from Sam who stood at all of 6'4" by his brother, his own machete blade glinting in the light.

Elena's heart was beating so loudly that Stefan felt the ponding in his own ears. It was only overshadowed by Katherine's, and his own. He had lived for almost two centuries, but with that age did not come a guide for the supernatural status that had allowed him to obtain it. It all came from trial and error, a lot of it involving blood, and moments like this one.

Darius' next smile was slow pulling, like a cat taking a stretch in a shaft of sunlight. "I didn't expect as much," Darius' reached into the pocket of his jacket and removed something that he concealed in his palm. "Which is why I came bearing proof."

Grasped in-between Darius' fingers was a silver ring with a dark Lapis Lazuli setting, the cursive silver _'D'_ being squashed under his thumb.

Stefan's breath actually stopped for several seconds, then it exploded outwards like a bomb.

"That's Damon's ring!"

Elena shouted it before Stefan could. Before he could shout it and rip Darius apart for what his grasping the ring implied.

"What did you do to him?!" Elena's shout tore across the tree line.

"Calm yourself girl," Darius spoke like he was scolding a child. "I haven't done anything to Damon that hasn't been done to him before."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Stefan's voice echoed on the last strains of Elena's yell, and the group of vampires crouched closer, but none of them moved. Not yet.

"There will be time for unanswered questions later," Darius' pocketed Damon's ring back into his jacket. His glance shifted over to the Hunters for a brief moment, "Showing these hunters your brother's daylight ring is only my first proof that you and I are not on the same side Stefan." A twig crunched under his boot as he stepped closer. "This is proof number two."

Darius ran at Stefan in a form of wind and speed. Stefan ducked, and dodged, moving past a thick pine tree trunk in a blur. As he dodged Darius' in those ten seconds he was suddenly aware that the group of Vampires hadn't moved at all, even at the sight of one of their own under attack. Stefan had been a vampire long enough to know that there was a _loyalty_ to vampires who traveled together. And if the other vampires with Darius weren't coming to defend him, it was because they knew they didn't _need _too.

Stefan came to this understanding too late, as he ducked from another attack, only to be flung hard into a tree. He retaliated in kind, fangs bared, moving to snap Darius' neck.

But, Darius' moved faster than a second should have allowed, even for a vampire and grabbed a fallen branch from one of the birch trees, and without ceremony or quip, slammed it into Stefan's leg.

Stefan's anger died into a howled grunt as he felt bones breaking. His grunt soon became a guttural scream as he looked down to see that his daylight ring missing and his arm alight with orange flames. He heard Elena scream his name as the flames began to creep up to his neck attacking it like fire ants in blinding pain.

This lasted for long, agonizing moments before something choked Stefan back behind the neck and the flames vaporized like a sprinkler system had been released from a smoke alarm signal. His shirt smoked like charcoal and he felt his skin sizzling.

Darius had him in a choke hold, and was holding out his hand which had _both_ Stefan and Damon's daylight rings. He released Stefan and at the same moment snapped something heavy over his wrist.

Stefan fell back with a gasp to find himself manacled to Darius by a chain of old iron handcuffs, his body barely able to support its own weight from the jagged broken bone that he felt poking through the skin on his leg.

"I am the Alpha of a higher race of vampires' boy. We have long since evolved past the need for witches spells. As long as I am alive and touching you in some form you will not burn without your ring," he jerked Stefan forward with hard strength and Stefan groaned from the resulting pain. Darius' cast his eyes up to Elena who was panting, staring at Stefan, unhurt, but wide eyed. "I suggest your friends remember that as we continue our journey." Darius' eyes shifted over to Sam and Dean Winchester. "As for you two, you're welcome to try and escape, but my children still remember nearly being wiped out by those Leviathans that you let loose, and they hold a grudge."

The vampires had finally started to move slowly, like wild dogs cornering prey that had evaded them for too long. As they came closer Stefan heard a sound like cracking ice magnified a thousand fold as all the vampires released, not a _set_ of fangs, but an entire _mouthful._

"What the hell?" Katherine turned to look at all the vampires in stunned shock.

Darius' once again jerked Stefan by the manacle. "Shall we take a walk Master Stefan?"

**xxxxXxxxx**

Stefan hadn't experienced sunlight in a long time. His daylight ring permitted him to walk in the sun's rays without self-emulating; but that was all that the ring allowed. He felt no warmth from the sun, just a tingling sensation like all the hairs on his body were standing up in goose bumps. When he had been a child he used to sit out in the gardens of his home when the summer had turned the days long and honey gold; doing absolutely nothing but soaking in the rays. It was one of things that Stefan missed most about being human.

The sun had succumb to the shadows that signaled that the afternoon was about to wane to early evening, but light still lingered bright in the blue sky. And for the first time in 147 years Stefan was able to _feel_ something like what the sun had felt like when he was a human being. It almost felt like he was developing a sunburn that his fair skin used to constantly get when he had stayed out on those summer days.

But the nostalgic waft of humanity was soon overpowered by the sensation of his shattered left leg scraping bone against bone as he was jerked along in his strides by Darius. The stick that Darius had used to break his leg had produced a compound fracture, and splinters of wood from the branch had embedded into the shattered areas. It wasn't his heart, but the wood was still agonizing against his bone, the constant moving kept it from being able to knit itself together.

Four of the eight vampires walked behind Darius' in a half crescent shape, guarding his back. These vampires formed a wall between Stefan and Sam and Dean, while the five remaining vampires walked behind the hunters. One of the female vampires, a strawberry blonde swathed in skin tight leather and denim held out a machete pressed against Sam Winchester's back. The hunter himself had a stream of blood streaking down his face, his face starting to form a pattern of molten bruises from where the vampire had slammed him into a tree after he tried to slice her head off. Her neck still bore a huge wound that she wasn't paying attention too.

Sam Winchester himself looked a bit dazed, but more pissed at being in this kind of situation. Beside him Dean Winchester just looked pissed, like a caged dog about to bite the people who caged him.

Stefan barely had time to process these surroundings that he found himself in because, vampire or not, walking on shattered bone was very disorienting. Especially now when his focus was split on two things: keeping this pain back enough so that he could manage to keep walking, and making sure Elena and, yes, even Katherine stayed within his field of vision. They were both about a foot behind him, their steps crunching on the rocks and rot of the forest floor. The few times Stefan looked back before Darius' jerked him forward he saw Elena's horror stricken angry face directed at what was being done to him.

And Stefan's only way to show her that he was okay was to remain standing upright. "What did you mean-" Stefan hated the grunted, pained sound of his voice. He hated this entire damn situation. "About what Damon had _done_ to him before?"

Darius' didn't stop walking or turn around, but Stefan could _hear_ the smile move across his dry lips. "You were always persistent Stefan. As I recall you were always an endless parade of questions."

"Was that before or after you became a vampire?" Stefan grunted out as he stepped over a flat piece of rock that shoved a piece of wood against the nerve that had been exposed from his shattered tibia. He fought the urge to cry out, not wanting to give Darius the satisfaction.

"I turned _long_ before I came to Mystic Falls Stefan," Darius returned, not seeing Stefan's expression to his announcement because he still hadn't turned around. "I was a servant in the Governor's back when Louisiana was still a colony of France, and I was turned by a beautiful pet of the governor named Rebecca Mikaleson. I fled the colony and moved in search of a cure for my ailment. But none were available. But it was New Orleans, the land of witches and hoodoo; I finally found a local woman who tried to cure me-"

"Witches can't cure vampires-" The pain was up to Stefan's neck and pushed his words out his mouth before he could force himself to shut up.

"A fact I didn't know at the time Master Stefan. But this witch she was _old_ world hoodoo, her lineage ran to the very first demons," This time Darius did turn around, and it wasn't to meet Stefan's expression it was to meet Sam and Dean's.

"Demons-" Dean Winchester finally spoke out. "_You_ bargained with Demons?" He looked away like the air Darius breathed had suddenly turned the air rancid.

Stefan's head was filled with pain and sliding around his skull like loose bricks, but he managed to muster up enough of a confused as hell look about the demon remark. But before he could say anything about it Darius interrupted his thoughts

"Monsters aren't above deals with the demonic Dean," Darius said it like he was reading an article heading in a newspaper. "I didn't find out until later this deal was black. The spell didn't _cure_ me. She bargained with her demonic book keeper and created a spell that mutated my new vampire genetics, it turned me into _this,"_ Darius held out his hands to encompass himself, at the same time his hand jerked the chain yanking Stefan at a hard right.

"I would've asked for my money back," Dean Winchester returned.

Darius smiled again while Stefan fought to remain standing on his bad leg, breath heaving in pain.

"I hated what I was at first, but gradually I came to the understanding that I wasn't angry so much as _lonely_. The other vampires out there were nothing like who I had become; so I built new ones." Darius glanced over to the vampires that entrapped Stefan and the others in a net of bodies. "By casting that spell, that hoodoo witch turned me into my _own_ Original Vampire, free to create my own lineage, not hindered to the restrictions of sunlight and stakes like these," Darius eyed Elena, Katherine and Stefan like they were garbage left on the roadside.

"Is that why you became a house servant on Abilene Rosenbaum's plantation? Because you were so advanced?" Stefan had been raised in a century when slavery was an accepted part of life, but even as a child he would never show disrespect to them, because they were still _people_, people who didn't deserve their treatment. This didn't apply to Darius anymore. "Or did sleeping with her keep you in your shackles for so long?" Stefan grasped the iron chain that connected him to Darius' and rattled it.

The minute noises of the forest floor seemed to come to the forefront, a twig snapping, a robin lighting onto a branch with a new piece for its nest. Darius' face shifted like the noise shifted, taking Stefan's words in and the same moment he took the chain in his hand and pulled in an arch slamming Stefan's bad leg out from under him. Stefan heard the cracks in as the twigs failed to break his fall, but the fall didn't fail to break his other leg.

Stefan's scream escaped him like a sheet of canvas being torn apart. The world exploded, first bright red like he was looking at it through burst capillaries, then hot white like something had exploded into his eyes and left him blind.

"Stefan!" Elena screamed Stefan's name more than she had said it the last few days. She could smell Stefan's blood from the bone that had sliced through his skin like a knife. She moved towards him, but her path was blocked by one of the female vampires, a blonde with hair that glowed like Caroline's but whose expression was one that Caroline could never pull off, something completely malicious.

"I don't think so _bitch!"_ The vampire growled, a mouthful of needlelike teeth descended over her regular ones and she lunged forward.

Elena met the attack head on, there was a moment where she could have gone for the throat of the other vampire and tore it off, it's what Damon would have done, what _Katherine _would have done, even what Stefan would have done if the situation had been dire enough. But she couldn't. Not because she was physically unable too, but because she never relished in killing anyone. And it was what gave the vampire the upper hand, because she had no problems with it_. _She flipped Elena backwards onto the forest floor, her black hiking boot pinned against her throat. It wasn't stylish, it was animalistic. True fighting was never about style, or form, it was about hurting someone more that you were being hurt.

Elena felt her breath being crushed by the traction bumps of the shoe. From across the forest rot she could see Stefan's sternum being crushed by one of the other vampires. The months in the safe, and the flashbacks had drained Stefan, reversing his and Elena's roles, making her _his_ protector this time.

"Let him go!" Elena grabbed the ankle of the vampire and tried to snap it off her, but she only pulled up a few inches before she was flung back down to the branches.

"How quaint are _you?"_ The female vampire glanced over to the man in a black leather jacket who took it as an invitation and crushed Stefan's sternum harder with his shoe. Elena heard him scream again. "Sticking up for your stray mongrel trash?" She leaned down and jerked Elena's had back up, then down hard enough to make her vision swim.

"Lydia, Tyler," Darius stood a foot ahead of them like a teacher about to scold his class for ruining their art projects by playing with their finger paints before they were supposed to. "Mr. Salvatore and I go far back, let's not be rude to him and his lady friend shall we? Remember we need all the warm bodies we can for these trials."

"Come on Darius!" 'Tyler' cut in snarky, almost like Damon's. "Let's just kill them! We have enough experiments!"

Darius' eyes seemed to freeze over like miniature lakes, "I am the Alpha, you will _not_ address me so informally-" Darius took a threatening step towards Tyler. "Is that clear?"

Tyler's smile was snide, angry. "You've been ruling for too long _Darius,"_ he stared down at Stefan and grabbed a broken branch from the ground, snapping it into a jagged point. "We're doing things _my_ way-"

"_No!" _Elena screamed. There came commotion behind Elena, something that turned Lydia's head away from her, her hair moving above Elena like the wings of a bird.

"No!" Lydia screamed, and she released Elena's neck, Elena coughed once and was on her feet in time and watched Tyler's head fall clean off his neck. His head tumbled one direction and his body in another, like a garish curtain revealing the form of Sam Winchester gripping to a bloody machete.

In the same fluid movement that had severed Tyler's head from his neck, the Hunter reached down with his weaponless hand and reached and pulled Stefan to his feet.

Lydia's face melted into something so feral, it was more anger than expression, she tore at Sam with a scream that rattled the ground like an earthquake, dodging the 'swishing' of the hunter's blade in acrobatic misses. She lunged again, harder, and Elena ran at her in a blur of wind and fast movement.

Which wasn't fast enough to beat the sound of Dean Winchester's blade slicing across the sinews of Lydia's neck, rolling her severed head to the ground.

Elena backed away from Dean in a startle; and he met her eyes. Hunter and hunted lines blurred because of where she stood beside his brother, and where the body of Lydia stood at his feet.

Elena's breaths threatened to out run the beating of her heart, leaving her feeling like she was out of her body, it was only with this feeling that she suddenly realized that their party was missing someone.

Katherine.

"_Where's the key?" _

Elena's thoughts were torn from her head at the growled sound of Sam Winchester's voice, his knife pressed tight to Darius' neck.

Darius' eyed Sam like the entire idea of what was happening was amusing to him. "I can kill you Sam." He looked over at the remaining group of vampires that stood around him, waiting for their signal to attack.

"You can try," Sam returned in a voice of ice.

"I never _try _anything boy, I get it _done!_" Darius' eyes flickered over to Stefan who looked like the only thing that kept him from killing Darius' was the consequences of such an action. "I know of your conquests Sam, those vans, I _created _this project, did you not think I would? Darius's smile widened. "And I had to see it for myself, Sam Winchester, aiding _my _wishes."

"Shut up!" Sam gritted his teeth and pushed the knife in deeper.

"Who do you think convinced an elitist group of paranoid rich socialites to privatize the destruction of a _particular_ race of vampires?-" he rattled the chain, and eyed Stefan like he was a dog on a leash. Stefan eyed him back like he wanted to rip his throat out.

"I said _shut. up!"_ Sam growled back, his voice booming like thunder in Elena's ears.

"What's wrong Sam? You don't want your prey, or your brother to know about the bribes that lined your pockets tricking out all those pretty little things over to me? Do you think that saving them now when it's too late will matter anymore?"

"He said shut up!" Dean stepped in-between Darius and Sam. His machete blade was raised in an arc, and he brought it down hard by Stefan's hand.

Elena almost screamed, but saw in an instant that it had severed the chain between Stefan and Darius leaving Stefan manacled to nothing but the open air. There was a moment where Elena considered that Darius had been lying about what would happen to Stefan if he lost the contact from the chain, but the moment the link was severed by the machete's blade Stefan's body lit up like a bone fire.

Dean moved back from the heat, and this time Elena screamed, her voice only being drowned out by Stefan's own agonized screams. It didn't matter that Darius was about 500 years older than her, she ran at him anyway to save the life of her friend.

She was literally a breath away from attacking Darius when ducked at just the last moment and pushed the daylight ring onto one of Stefan's fingers.

The flames died out like water being poured over a campfire, but Stefan's agonized grunts took longer to die. His body bowed on the ground, on masticated and broken legs. His flesh was red and crackled like overcooked chicken skin.

"The old plantation house is less than five miles from here," Darius raised his head and pointed to through a thicket of tall evergreens. "That's where the project has its 'base of operations' we'll call it, that's where Damon is." Darius looked over to the two remaining living vampires with him. "We'll take our leave of you, I'm sure you remember the rest of the way Stefan, just like you remember that your brother won't last two seconds out here without this," Darius held out Damon's daylight ring in between his thumb and forefinger. "So when we meet up again, I suggest you remember that before you chose to _act."_

The shattered bones in Stefan's legs now felt like metal filings scraping against metal filings. His skin felt like it was _cooking_. But hate for Darius superseded above everything else. Stefan had done things to Damon in his eternal existence that weren't innocent, he'd staked him, vervained him, abandoned him. But none of that mattered over one key element: Damon was his _brother_, and no one _else_ was allowed to hurt him.

Stefan pulled himself up on a body that, had he still been human, would no longer have been functioning. But by the time he was back on two semi-somewhat functioning legs, the clearing of vampires had vanished.


	8. Chapter 8

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

"_Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster."_

_~Frederick Nietzsche_

_**xxxxXxxxx**_

_Cedar Rapids, Michigan _

_2010._

_The alleyway was like countless others: dirty, rat infested, and smelled like stale beer and piss. A drizzle of rain painted abstract paintings on the crumbled surface of the road. A tall figure leaned against the brick wall of a bar that had seen better days since its last health inspection, but was still lively and loud even through the bricks that hid it away. The man had hands deep in his pocket, his breath making a smoke signal into the air._

_The alley was narrow, and the sound of a half dying motor reverberated around the brick, creating a tunnel kind of echo that pulled the man away from the wall and over to a dark Dodge Charger that sat under the bar's neon sign with the arrow pointing towards the Charger's roof. _

_Sam Winchester leaned against the trunk of the car watching the van, painted a rusty white as it crawled like a bug into the narrow space, finally dying a complete death a foot away from the car. Sam stood up to his full height, removing his hands from his pockets, his right hand now around a silver handgun._

_Two men exited the van, the sound of the doors slammed shut. The driver's heavy work boots splashed through the puddle on the road. _

_Both men wore navy blue mechanics jumpsuits, and as they neared Sam he could see the caked black ring of grime under their nails. At least the mechanics uniforms weren't completely bogus things. _

_The driver eyed Sam like he hadn't decided whether to talk to him or simply kill him outright. The second man gripped a dirty crowbar loosely in his hand and stared at the gun in Sam's hand like it was a toy compared to the metal he grasped._

"_Why'd you call us?" The driver snapped in a voice that would make a mockery of sandpaper. "Your little vampire bitch almost killed two of our best guys!"_

"_If your guys were really the _best _they would have done their jobs right and wouldn't have been Vamp chow," Sam stated this it like it's a clinical fact, his eyes drew a bead on the crowbar as its raised in the air, countering by raising his gun."We can keep this professional gentlemen, or I can blow your heads off right now, your choice." _

_The driver of the van stared at Sam with eyes that were too small for his head, and anger that was too large for his body. "What the fuck kindz _business_ has someone with nothing to offer?"_

_Sam laughed dryly, wetting his tongue with a quick motion. He leant away from his Charger and opened the door to the backseat. He ducked inside and came back out pulling out a girl, seven-years-old with dark brown hair braided down her back. She wore black t-shirt and jeans that both looked brand new and, held onto a white stuffed polar bear, a pink backpack on her back._

"_Where are we?" the girl clutched the bear tighter to herself and stared with wide eyes at the men in front of her then to Sam. "You said you were taking me to my Aunt Jenny's-"_

_Sam knelt down next to the girl, lowering the gun. "Marissa, your parents were killed, remember?" he spoke softly, watching her nod, tears welled in her eyes. "You remember how they died?"_

"_You said it was vampires," Marissa said the words around a choked sob like she couldn't understand what she was saying._

"_That's right," Sam returned, still in that soft voice. "Vampires, are ruthless monsters who kill people and drink all the blood in their bodies." He had to stop as Marissa mewled out a sob and clutched her bear closer to her. "I wasn't able to stop them before your mom and dad were torn apart, but I'm going to find those monsters and kill them, alright?" Marissa nodded, wiping at her eyes with the back of her hand. "But I need your help, can you help me?"_

_Marissa sniffed and wiped more at her eyes, and nodded. "Okay."_

_Sam cocked his head towards her. "You're going to go with these men-"_

_The men behind her stood up straighter, and Marissa's eyes grew wide and scared._

"_They're going to help us kill _all_ the vampires, so they can't hurt anyone else."_

_Marissa shook her head more frantically. "No I want to go to my Aunt Jenny's!" _

"_This is for the best Marissa okay?" Sam took her bear from her and unzipped her backpack, closing it and around the toy animal, adjusting the pink straps on her shoulders, for all the world like he was a father about to send his child off to school in the morning. "We all have to do what we can to keep the vampires away."_

"_No!" Marissa ran at Sam and threw her small arms around him. Sam untangled the child's arms from his jacket and took her by the arm pulling her over to the driver who grabbed her forcefully and picked her up by the waist. "No please! I don't want to go!"_

_Marissa began to scream and cried louder, but the sounds of the bar behind the bricks and alleyway was louder than her, and the alleyway itself was narrow and half deserted. So no one heard the girl's screams except the three who already knew about them. _

_The driver pulled the girl to the van, her high pitched screams echoed off the bricks of the alleyway._

_The second man reached into the pocket of his coveralls and pulled out a wad of money._

_Sam took it with no hesitation. He had first refused on the grounds that he considered himself too above the street crowd to take bribes. But he needed untraceable cash when he hunted, so he started taking it; he hadn't told Samuel because it wasn't the old man's business. _

_The wad of folded twenties went into Sam's pocket and there was a struggling screaming sound as Marissa screamed erupted even louder, clawing at the back of the van's opened back hatch door._

"_Please! Don't make me go Agent Jennings! Please!" Marissa was shoved into the van, her screams died out with the hard closing of the doors. _

"_We're done here." Sam told the man. _

"_Until the next time _Agent,"_ the man returned walking back to his van, 150 dollars lighter, but his van one person heavier. _

_Sam waited until the van backed out the narrow alleyway before he climbed back into his Charger and gunned the V8 engine, not looking back at the van once as he drove away._

**xxxxXxxx**

'Lydia's' and 'Tyler's' head laid with on the rot that lined the forest floor with opened, fang barred mouths. Their eyes had glazed over opaque, frozen in the rage that had caused their violent ends.

Elena stood beside Stefan whose skin had gone from third degree raw hamburger patty red to angry sunburn red in the span of a few minutes. The vampire's clothes still smoked, and the air smelled badly of burnt flesh, but he batted at the third degree burns like they were a minor inconvenience.

He looked over to Sam then Dean. "Why'd you help me?" His question wasn't stunned gratefulness; it was a demand to know.

"Because vampire or not, you haven't given us a real reason _not _to," Sam returned. His eyes turned away from the looks of Stefan and Elena and landed before they could be stopped, onto his brother.

Dean's look was a scraped raw moment of emotion that Sam couldn't handle so he looked out over tree line until he managed to find the sliver of the road they had been forced to abandon after they had been ascended on by the Alpha Vamp, Darius, whoever the hell he was.

"Was he lying about how far it was?" Sam asked of Stefan.

Stefan only took a few seconds before responding, despite being half burned alive. "No. I haven't been back here in almost 150 years, but it looks like the same place; there used to be a carriage path, down there," Stefan gestured to the speck of road that was visible from the thicket of trees.

Dean glanced down where Sam was looking and where Stefan was pointing. "That looks about a quarter of a mile away, with your calculated two that makes almost three miles we're got left to cover on foot." Dean broke off at Stefan's grunt of pain. "And since I'm guessing that you're not exactly up to warp Vamp speed yet it's going to take a while."

"He needs blood," Elena set her hands on Stefan's shoulders.

"So tap open one of your unkillable veins," Dean returned to her.

"Human blood works better than vampire blood," Elena returned like it was a fact that all Vampires learned when they turned.

"Evolve and make due," Dean said. "I'm not sticking a spile into my blood bank just because I decided to save your life."

"Fine I'll do it," Sam drew out the switchblade hidden his boot. 'Darius' and the other vampires had been through about frisking both him and Dean for weapons they had missed a few, including the extra machetes Sam and Dean had strapped under their jeans, which had cost them their lives.

Dean turned to him in total, shock. "What the hell Sam-?" He grabbed the blade Sam had raised to his wrist, jerking it away.

"Stefan knows how to get there," Sam returned. "And if he's _dead _he won't be able to show us," Sam raised the blade again.

"It's not his death that I care about Sam," Dean barked. "Look I get it, this is about what you did back in 09, but a few dick moves a lifetime ago doesn't constitute you splitting open your veins for vampires-"

"No, you _don't _get it, Dean!" Sam's yell reverberated over the trees. "That's the problem!" He drew in a hard breath, breathing in the scent of vampire blood and his own. "You don't get _anything _about me!" Sam raised the knife again before Dean could counter with physicality and slit the blade into a thick line of leaking blood across his skin. He squeezed his fist tightly, keeping it closed as he stepped over to Stefan and Elena. When he opened his hand a small lake of dark crimson sat on his palm.

Dean stepped forward with all the calm of a charging bull, but he didn't make a move to stop Sam. Instead he raised his machete and set the blade high over Stefan's neck. "I saved your life once, but if you over indulge, I'm going to rescind my offer."

Stefan stared at the blood on Sam's hand with harsh pants, like a starving beggar who had a heel of bread placed in front of him. There came a crackling sound like paper crumpling, and dark blood drew upwards in the veins under Stefan eyes. Fangs detracted from his teeth and he bit into Sam's palm.

It was like being stabbed simultaneously by two ice picks. Sam felt and saw the blood rush up out of his palm, his hand began to spasm.

All the while this was going on, Dean had his machete kissing the side of Stefan's neck like a guillotine blade.

Ten seconds past, 15, Sam's hand began to curl in on itself like a claw, the pain traveling hotly up his arm. Sam couldn't keep the pain of it all off his face anymore.

Dean noticed it in a second, all the fibers of his body that went against this damn deal in the first place tightened his fingers around the handle of his machete.

A second later the blade moved, _back_ as Stefan pulled his fangs out of Sam's skin.

Sam's felt his fingers uncurl like they were spring loaded. It felt like someone had pulled all the bones in his hand back into place all at once after a were now a set of jagged bleeding puncture marks, like eyes above the cut Sam had made. Blood still puddled freely onto his skin.

Stefan's face dripped with blood like a hideous goatee, but he kept his distance from Sam.

"You're right Sammy," Dean rumbled in a low voice as he pulled a worn red bandana from his jeans pocket. "I don't get you-" He wrapped it around Sam's palm before Sam could counter for him not too.

For a moment the trees around them became the clapboard of a weather worn church half eaten by dirt and rot. There was a demon tied to a chair, and the smell of blood.

Dean tied the knot hard above Sam's hand making him wince, drawing away what had been to what was. "But did you ever think that maybe I used to?" Dean released Sam's hand back in silence.

"Stefan," Elena looked at the other vampire, who despite having drunk however much volume he had managed to extract from Sam, didn't look revitalized. "That's not enough," Elena's voice was insistent. "You need more-"

"No," Stefan panted the word out, still eying the blood on Sam's hand, still not making a move towards it, but watching it like he _wanted _to. "If I keep going I'm not going to stop-" He wiped the blood off his face with his leather jack sleeve the hem of the fabric crumbled to powder from the movement. The crackling sound came again as the vampire's fangs retracted back into his mouth. He raised his dark eyes over to Sam.

Dean shrugged a look at Stefan. "Works for me," It wasn't that he didn't give a crap about the humanity that was obviously still clinging around the vampire like a vine on a brick wall. But even with as much, what could only be described as 'grudging respect' Dean was now feeling for Stefan, out in the woods with two severed vampire heads and the smell of blood and acrid smoke wasn't the place to get all touchy feely. "Alright, you're topped off we need to go."

"Thank you," the words were a messy breath, but they were heard.

Sam blinked up from the bandana, to the line that had blurred in the sand between him and Stefan from the vampire's words. His throat felt like he had swallowed a mouthful of thorns. "Dean's right, we need to move- you know the way-" Sam looked to the vampire who had thanked him for saving his life by ripping away a little of his. "So you're out in front."

"Sammy you're on point with him-Elena stays back with me," Dean lowered his machete to the ground but didn't put it away completely. "We're doing human speed, understand? Just because we're all quasi-friends now doesn't mean I trust either of you out that far ahead."

Sam was now standing on an outcropping of stones that had become slick with a neon green lichen moss from the constant rains that had fallen over the area in the past few months. This put him about a foot away from where Dean stood on a downslope of brown leaves and about two feet away from Stefan and Elena. What could've been a moment where both vampires attacked or killed Sam and Dean, turned into neither as Stefan hiked the small numbered distance over to him. Even at a regular human pace his speed was slower, Sam that he could hear the broken bones in Stefan's legs grinding against each other with every step.

Sam saw Elena shoot a glance upwards to Stefan and him return hers in the same silence, whatever connection they had meet in the open air before Stefan took the first step and the rest of them followed.

**xxxxXxxx**

The speck of road that had revealed itself in the trees seemed to elude them. Every time it appeared like they were getting closer to it, another set of trees seemed to grow in their way, or another boulder emerged in the path they were trying to break.

Sam kept step pace behind Stefan all the time, though it wasn't hard given Stefan's slowness. As the minutes wore on the grinding sound seemed to lessen, and his walking became more under his control. Sam knew he could've easily bolted. He'd been around enough vampires to know the quickness of their agility. But Stefan just continued to walk, like this was the only speed he knew.

The dried blood on Sam's jeans were now the only outward sign that he had been shot at all. The blood that Katherine had force fed him had healed the bullet wound completely. Sam was glad have full functional use of his leg again, but he would have preferred a half cauterized, painful bullet wound versus a mouthful of vampire blood in his body.

Sam turned to Stefan. "What happened to Katherine?"

It would had been idle chit chat conversation, were Stefan not a vampire, were Sam a hunter, and were they both not walking towards something that was most likely a huge trap.

"She probably bolted during all the commotion. I've known Katherine for 147 years," Stefan returned, keeping his eyes to the path he was creating. "Looking out for herself has always been her number one priority," Stefan stole a glance down to Sam's pant leg, the veins in his face remaining flat this time at the sight of blood. "She fed you Elena's blood didn't see?"

"How about we not talk about this?" Sam snapped, still tasting the coppery taste of Elena's blood on his tongue.

"You know that's how my brother and I turned," Stefan went on in spite of Sam's warning. "Katherine fed us her blood- but the town wasn't exactly partial to vampires back then, so when our father found us trying to help her escape Mystic Falls he shot us both-"

The snap of Stefan's boot on a branch coincided with the flickered look that Sam cast over to him after he had just revealed that his own father killed him.

"-when we woke up we were vampires. It's not like we asked for this-"

Father back, though not by much, came an echo of the same conversation.

"-You _kill_ people sweetheart," Dean interrupted Elena Gilbert's 'Give Vampire's a Chance' lecture as he walked behind his brother and Stefan.

"And how many people have you and your brother killed?" Elena's brown ankle boots were ill equipped to be hiking in the woods, but she acted like she didn't care.

"We kill _monsters_, alright?" Dean snapped. "_Not_ people."

"I used to be a person too Dean-"

"_Used _to be," Dean returned. "You can try to play the part of a regular girl all you want, but at the end of the day, it's not who you really are."

"I was driven off the road and drowned with vampire blood in my body-" Elena countered, she looked ahead and caught the sight of Stefan's back. "Stefan and Damon were both tricked by Katherine and turned into vampires when their father killed them. We didn't asked for this," Elena stopped for a fraction of a moment, and stared at him. "If I hadn't become a vampire my brother Jeremy would've been all alone, I couldn't do that to him, we're all we have left of our family. How does any of that that make me a monster?"

Dean watched her back not able to tell her anything before the roadside finally erupted just past two pale beech tree trunks that were as thick as a telephone pole.

Up ahead Stefan stumbled, a full on ungraceful, pitch towards the ground

Sam yanked Stefan up by the crook of his elbow before his hunter logic could counter. "You okay?"

Stefan braced an arm against the tree like he wanted to hug it. He grunted a bracing for a second. "The breaks take longer to mend if I'm walking on them."

By this time Elena and Dean had caught up with them and Elena immediately ran over to Stefan and set a hand on his arm, her face awash in concern for her friend.

"Why are you really helping us?" Stefan turned to Sam.

"Because Darius was telling the truth," Sam never expected he'd be telling a story to two vampires as well as Dean in air that smelled like rot and blood, one that he didn't want to tell at all. "I first met Katherine when I handed her over to the Augustine's. I didn't know that the Alpha Vamp was running the show, but I knew about the Project, it was story circulated in the Hunters circle I was with."

None of the looks given to Sam was as piercing as Dean's.

"The Augustine's whole agenda was to eradicate vampires, but they were burning through them before their experiments could find the solution."

"What do you mean solution?" Dean returned.

"They wanted a way to kill vampires without having to keep doing it themselves." Sam took a hard breath, the forest betrayed him by not taking the same pause, not allowing him a moment for the earth to shatter. The chirping birds, the breeze, they still continued on, forcing Sam to continue on with them. "But, they needed fresh supplies, so I gave them to them-"

Dean's eyes were hard set on him, not angry or hateful, not anything but a blank look like he was reserving a space for later emotion that would eventually catch up to him.

"I didn't even flinch when they said they needed kids, because of their virility. My _Logic_-" Sam huffed a quick laugh as he said 'logic' with a capital inflection to try and describe away what he had done when he hadn't been attached to his soul. "-about what I was doing at the time was justified to me. Using people as bait to track the Augustine's location. And even if I didn't find the location in time to save those kids, eradicating vampires wasn't something to waste sleep over." Sam shrugged like he wanted to shrugged away the tick, the corroding acid like feeling that came with the memories he buried in the same place he buried the fire and blood memories of the 180 years of torture with Lucifer in the Cage. "One of them never stopped screaming the entire time they dragged her away-"

Dean showed Sam more courtesy than the forest, and gave the revelation the sharp, clarifying pause. "Sam-"

Sam snapped his head to his brother like it had been jerked off scene by a marionette string. He didn't say anything, not because he couldn't find any words to say, but because he found _hundreds _of words to say, but even if all those hundreds escaped him all at once, it wouldn't change a damn thing. "We need to move before we lose the light," Sam said this to everyone he stood in front of, but the only gaze he saw was Dean's as he stepped down the path, the forest resembling the footpath he traveled in his mind to meet Death months ago.

Reality and dream broke into dust on the first step Sam's boot made on the hard asphalt. There was a harsh wind on his left side when he turned Stefan had moved a handful of paces ahead of him, but no more than that, observing the land like it was answering his questions. He turned back to face the other way.

"Stefan, what is it?" Elena could apparently sense something in his gaze that went beyond the surface color of his green eyes.

"It's close," Stefan's face was turned to the wind like he was a dog that had caught the scent of something.

"How close?" Dean's machete hung loose in his hand, but his grip on the handle remained tight, and he raised the blade after what Stefan said, watching the road with the calculating eye of someone knew that such things didn't remain silent for very long.

"A mile or so," Stefan twisted up to a twisted oak tree that looked much older than the other trees that surrounded it, a triple thing with branches larger than most tree trunks, gnarled like an old washerwoman's knuckles. Stefan rested his finger on a circled groove no bigger and no wider than the tip of his thumb. "There used to be sign posts here, pointing towards Parkesburg."

Sam had been observing people his entire life, his father, Dean, watching their mannerisms, with Dean learning to imitate the brother he considered very much a superhero when he was still a kid. And his senses were now honed enough to see the way Stefan's hand lingered on the tree like it was alive in the way that _people_ were alive.

"What?"

The look on Stefan's face went almost whimsical, peeling away the vampire mask for just a second. Sam's boots crunched and snapped the twigs beneath his feet until he was behind the Stefan and saw something that wasn't noticeable until he was right up to it.

There were scratchings in the tree trunk, deliberate ones most likely made with a knife. Letters. '_D.S.S.' _The scratches were faint and almost worn smooth from the bark that had grown over it, in what Sam suspected was a century that had passed since it was first carved.

"Damon and I, we broke down here once, in our Father's carriage. He carved this with the knife he got for his birthday, while we waited for the wheel to be mended-" Stefan moved his hand like a slight movement would erase the scratches completely like pencil marks as well as the memories that came with it. But his eyes lingered on it just a moment longer before he pulled away. "He never got to finish it."

Dean saw the barely there carvings done most likely over a hundred years ago, and he can feel the knife in his hands, scratching his initials beside Sam's by the rear window of the Impala. On those nights in the hospital after the Third Trial, Dean would sometimes sit in the Impala and run his hands over those initials. And each time he touched them he had some insane hope that just maybe the part of Sam that still was alive in those words would give his brother strength to come back alive for real.

"Back there," Dean eyed Elena, then Stefan, not a sizing look, one that bore its own statement. "I didn't mean half of the crap I said. I was playing my role to get it out of you both about what the hell was going on. But if you're really legitimate about this," Dean glanced up to the carved initials in the tree. "Then I'll be legitimate and say we're not pulling any tricks in helping you-" For Dean to say those words, it wasn't something he gave lightly. "You and her want to take things south afterwards, you better be prepared to deal with the consequences. But I know a thing or two about family, so right now," his eyes shifted to Stefan. "I'm helping you find your brother."

The forest held its breath again, for a moment, before Dean walked off in a path that he didn't know, leaving his brother, and two vampires to follow him.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

The road started out smooth, like glass, or as smooth as asphalt could be in relation to glass. But the further on they walked it began to show its age like a child walking along their own timeline. Dean kept up the lead for about a quarter of a mile before Stefan drew his pace faster to match, then overtook him, leading the way down the crumbling asphalt.

Pot holes as big as Sam's feet began to emerge at random places, weeds choked the pieces of road that were still viable making the path cumbersome to walk with especially if you were carrying weapons. At one point Sam slipped up enough in his footing that his machete was sent dropping to the roadside with a thundered clang. The blade made a slice of a noise before Sam could reach for it.

Elena rose up from a crouch and handed it to him by the hilt, the blood of dead vampires staining the curved blade.

The silence that followed was thick, both sides that the blade divided comprehending the gesture.

Sam grabbed the handle of his machete, ghosting over Elena's fingertips in the movement. "Thanks."

"You saved Stefan's life with this," She watched him with eyes that were older than her age would ever be able to reach. "Whatever else you may have done with it, that's all I need to know."

She stepped past him, her boots breaking up bits of the road. She stopped so suddenly a moment later that Sam nearly collided with her. Stefan had stopped a foot in front of her and she had nearly collided with _him. _

Raising his head Sam could see why.

The road stretched and grew wider winding down a sloped hill until it melted into a town that spread out over the landscape like a blooming flower. Bricked buildings shaded by tall green oak and walnut trees were intermixed with three story tall white clapboard structures, some topped with the peaked spires and crosses of churches. A brown lake emerged like a stain, bordering the left side of the town. The entire landscape was bathed in the honey gold light of the approaching evening position of the sun.

Dean stood next to Stefan and surveyed the landscape, even with the sparse amount of time he'd spent in Mystic Falls, the similarities of Parkesburg to it were very noticeable. Even from this far away he could make out a central town square, a tall building with a domed roof that looked like a government building and a center of shops circled around it.

But what caught Dean's attention, was what had most likely stopped them in the first place. Gauging the distance to be about a half a mile out from the town he saw the pale brown colors of a field spread over the land like a checkerboard. And at the very end of the horizon that Dean could view, a white spec sat like a fallen star. Dean hadn't paid a whole lot of attention in school outside of wood and metal shop, nor was he some vamp who knew the town when it was _built,_ but he still knew about the plantation houses that existed in Virginia. Most of them were now nothing but giant historical tourist traps, places for people to dress in bad period costumes and sell cheap wooden replicas of civil war cannons. No one would suspect a vampire killing floor to be in so obvious of a place.

Which made it the ideal location for such a place to exist.

The part road where they stood was set at a high vantage which gave them almost a view of the entire town. The tree line was thick enough behind them, and the town low enough in elevation that the chances of being seen were minimal. But even with these factors, Dean felt too exposed. First rule of Hunting: never announce yourself to your target if you weren't sure where that target _was._

"Alright," Dean turned to Stefan. "So what's your game plan? Cause Alpha Vamp, or _Darius_, whatever the hell that son-of-a-bitch calls himself these days, is sanctimonious not stupid, those hills down there are gonna to have eyes."

"What about the tunnels?" Sam asked. "This used to be a hub for the Underground Railroad; some of them connected to plantation houses."

"The closet access point is at the east edge of town," Stefan stared over the town like a surveyor until his eyes fell where Dean's did, to the white building far off at the end of a whole lot of nothing. "Darius already knows we're coming, trying to hide now is just going to waste time."

"So what do we do?" Elena directed her question at Stefan.

"We go in," What Sam was saying held no inflection of a grand speech like _Braveheart_, it wasn't a warrior's call to battle. It was echoless words on a crumbled roadside as he stared down at a town where he had sent dozens of innocent kids to be turned into vampires.

"He's right," Dean cut in, seeing the look Sam gave him that he knew his brother was doing despite himself. Some things simply became ingrained overtime. "Our best bet is to go towards the tunnel, use it to get to Scarlet O'Hara's harem. Two vampires, and two hunters should be enough to even the odds for a while."

"But what if it's not?"

Dean had known Elena Gilbert for barely a day, half of which he spent debating whether or not to kill her. But he now knew her long enough to know that her innate sense to question everything was always the first thing that came out of her.

"Sam and I are going down there with or without you," Dean responded. "After what that son-of-a-bitch Alpha Vamp pulled I'm not letting him live. If you want to save your boyfriend, you're going to have to stow the internal battles for another time, you understand?"

"The tunnels used to start behind the old livery," Stefan had his phone out, and was flipping through screens, making Dean wonder for half a second what he was doing, until he saw a black and white map image. "Latest web feed of the town says it's still standing."

"I could've done without the ad for Motorola, but it works for me," Dean agreed. "Let's go."

They descended the roadside moving with the crest of the hill until they were able to abandon the road for the sidewalk that erupted from the right side of it like a clinging vine. The buildings and landscape encased themselves around them the further they traveled into Parkesburg

People populated the street: families with young children, touristy couples in their souvenir wear, camera phones out, snapping pictures of them smiling in front of a large wooden signpost behind an old gray bricked building.

The irony of the happiness of a town that did secret, torturous experiments hung prominently by a wooden sign:

_Welcome to Parkesburg_

_Everything that's great about the country!_

An open face carriage drawn by a cream colored horse with black blinders moved slowly past a red sports car like it was part of the traffic. The sun had begun to lower into night half misting the edges of the horizon in faded orange and inky blue black. Streetlamps switched on, outlining the town in blinking white. The air smelled like hot coffee and fresh pastries from the cafes.

The two hunters and two vampires were like rocks in the middle of this constant stream of activity. Somewhere in the distance a child laughed, a camera phone went off, a group of teenagers stumbled out drunk from behind a bar with an outdoor porch brightly lit with orange light.

"So where is it?" Dean moved past a blonde after she bumped into him with an 'excuse me' before she gave him a long, appreciative eye roam over her shoulder.

Stefan scanned over the crowd that moved in and between them. "Should be east."

"'Should be' isn't a direction-" Dean returned with growling impatience because they were blatantly out in the crowd for everyone to notice them, including the undead.

"I haven't been here in 157 years, geography tends to change every century or so." Stefan had barely been snarky, his voice kept having an edge of pain to it because of obvious reasons. But he didn't hold himself back this time.

"So all that map questing was for nothing?" Dean snapped back, but then he saw an opportunity walk past, a brunette with a dazzling smile. She looked like a local, dressed in a warm sweater coat and jeans, brown leather messenger bag hung over her shoulder. "Scuse me sweetheart-!" Dean waved at her.

The woman stopped and turned to him with dark blue eyes half hidden in the shadowed artificial light of the streetlamps overhead. She went from looking annoyed to looking pleased at the sight of him. "Hi."

"Hey there," Dean flashed her a smile that she returned eagerly. "You wouldn't happen to know where the old Livery in town? My brother and his friends are doing a paper on local town lore for their college history class-"

The woman looked from Elena to Stefan and then to Sam, and her eyes did a double take when she stopped on Sam, like Dean's lie fell apart there. "Aren't you a little old to be a college freshman?"

"My girlfriend was killed the first time I started college, it offset things," Sam weaved the truth into the lie that Dean had started.

The woman's eyes went from questioning Sam to a wide eyed apologetic shock for her judgment. "I'm sorry-"

"Like I said it was a while ago," Sam said quickly; he didn't want to keep picking at the wound of Jess. The pain of her death had dulled under the crushing weight of the other pains of his life, but it had never died. "If it's not too much trouble, we actually from out of town and it's a long drive back."

"Yeah, of course," the woman melted, as all women did whenever Sam enforced his docile look on them. "The livery's back there," she gestured behind her to a long sidewalk that bordered the road. "Just go straight down Avenue E and make a right at the third traffic light, that's 52nd Street; follow that and when you smell all the horses, you made it."

"Great, thanks." Sam returned, watching as she gave him one more sympathetic smile before she walked past him. "Shut up," Sam words were hard to what he could hear Dean was about to say, passing a glance over his brother and to turn to Stefan and Elena. "The crowd's big, too many places to hide vamps, we need to get going."

"Sam-"

"I told you I don't want to hear it Dean." Sam cut Dean off.

"And I'm telling you _hold on!"_ Dean gripped the inside of Sam's elbow and halted his movements, the way Sam had done for him before when they were still in the forest. A group of tourists passed them, glancing back at the hostile sound of Dean's voice.

Dean kept a hold of Sam's arm and pushed him two steps back against a store front of pastries. "Listen man," Dean lowered his voice, looking back to the crowd to ensure that they were being ignored, then towards Stefan and Elena who had become invested enough in the both of them that they couldn't ignore what was happening. "You don't have to hear it but you need to _understand_ it. Katherine shoving vampire blood in you, using _Jess_ as a cover story- You're spiraling Sam, and you need to get it together before it gets you killed-"

"Why; because you're trying protect me? Or because you can't be alone?" All the things that Sam still managed to hold back from Dean, even with everything he managed to _tell_ Dean spilled out in the din of passing tourists, and two vampires.

"Because it's _stupid, _Sam," Dean hissed, shooting a death glare to the man who stared at him for interrupting the cellphone call he was on. The man's glare grew louder until Dean flashed a bright silver end of his gun and the man scurried off. "You believe what you want about me, but you're not stupid enough to get yourself killed like this_, I know _that._"_

The streetlight above them drew long shadows across the sidewalk, and it glared shadow into the expression Sam had on his face; he pushed away from Dean and continued down the din of people.

The walk to the livery hadn't been given in a measurable distance by the blonde who had wanted to pity fuck Sam. But after following her directions they walked three blocks down Avenue E turning right at the third traffic light that marked 52nd Street. Across a puddle of black road, stood a bricked building with a slanted tin roof; another guilt lettered sign hung at the front of a line of tourists, still out in drones even though it was nearly dark outside. The line of people wound by a stable where a group of horses were corralled next to black carriages like the ones that were being pulled on the roadway. Two workers were viewable in the stable: one of them shoveling manure into a wheelbarrow and the other petting the neck of a dark brown mare and answering a woman and eager child's questions with a warm smile.

One that didn't match the face of one of the vampires that had led Dean through the woods and stripped him of his weapons. He glanced across the door to the entrance of the livery where the second vampire from the woods led the unsuspecting woman and girl into the livery.

"Damnit," Dean swore audibly at the presence of the two vampires. Which meant that the place was warranted enough to be guarded, which also meant that the others couldn't be far behind. "Two vamps out in front, guarantee there's more where that came from; we're going to need a distraction."

Stefan glanced left and right like he hadn't heard Dean, then crossed the roadway directly into oncoming traffic. Cars slammed on their breaks, but a gray Volvo didn't have time to stop before it hit him on an impact that sent him up and over the back of the car and hard onto the road.

People screamed, climbing out of their cars in shock.

Elena, pushed her way through the cars and the crowd to where Stefan was on the ground on his back.

The driver of the Volvo ran out into the road by the time Elena reached Stefan, falling on her knees.

More people in the crowded streets began to turn to the accident, including the people and the vampires at the stable.

The man's wife was out of the passenger side of the car, and looked on horrified. "Oh god!-"

"He just ran out into the road!" The man yelled like it would explain it away.

"I'm calling an ambulance!" The woman yanked a black cell phone from her purse and dialed frantically, looking down to Elena. "Honey is he breathing?"

Elena played her part and shook her head frantically, face white with shock. "I don't know!"

The entire time this was going on, Dean and Sam had hung back and watched it happen. They both saw the way Stefan walked right into the path of the oncoming car, it wasn't an accident, or suicidal, it was him giving them their distraction.

Dean moved past the stragglers as they filtered into the people who had formed a circle around Stefan and Elena, Sam following close behind him, pushing past the remaining onlookers who were just there to gawk. They moved across the street like this until they were at the start of a dirt path, only ten feet away from the Livery. A dark brown quarter horse watched them with wide eyes and shook its head in a quiet whinny.

Dean turned to the animal and put a finger to his lips like was quieting a child, the horse was having none of it and whinnied louder. The livery stable stood empty now except for the horses, the vampires and people were no longer there.

Sam watched the commotion behind him. He had little knowledge about vampire compulsion, but from what Katherine had bragged about, he suspected it only worked on one person at a time. There was no way Stefan and Elena could compel the half a dozen people around them to just let them walk off without resorting to something that would expose them as not human.

"We gotta get them out of there," Sam said.

"I know-"

"They led us this far, vamps or not-"

"I _know, _Sam-" Dean retorted again, staring at Sam then across the street at the crowd and the accident. "Follow my lead." He removed his gun from his jacket then walked back across the road.

"Hey!" Dean's voice thundered and boomed and demanded attention, which it got from the crowd behind him. He raised his gun in a two handed aim, the crowd screamed, "Federal Agent, move aside!"

"Back up!" Sam's barking voice picked up behind him, waving his fake FBI badge into the crowd, Taurus out, he pushed through the crowd and to where Stefan was writhing on the ground, his shoulder thrown over his body in a crooked, unnatural angle. After seeing him walk on two broken legs, and survive being half burned alive, Sam knew that the vampire was faking it for the crowd. He shoved Elena away and grabbed Stefan by a hard jerk to his uninjured arm.

"What are you doing?" Elena's voice betrayed _actual_ shock, like she believed Sam to be finally breaking their deal. But Sam had done this on purpose. Actual emotions to a situation would always be superior above even the best acting abilities to fake them.

"I didn't ask you to talk!" Sam barked at her.

"Your boyfriend violated his parole in five states sweetheart-" Dean pulled Elena up off the ground at the same at the same time Sam placed his knee on Stefan's back, gun aimed at the center of his chest; hearing him groan in pain.

Dean knelt down and stared hard at Stefan, jerking him up by his hair. And it was testament to how much Stefan was willing to trust Dean because he let him. "You shouldn't have run pal!" He slammed his head back down, and dug out a pair of handcuffs, manacling them to his writs.

Elena's face contoured into fear and hurt. "You're hurting him!"

A skinny teen with black hair held an iPhone up only a foot away from Sam, camera recording everything.

"Shut off the phone!" Sam barked.

"No way Pig!" The kid's voice was as skinny as the rest of him, high pitched even when threatening. "This is Police Brutality! I'm YouTubing this shit-"

Sam shifted his gun to one hand and snatched iPhone from the kid slamming it apart on the pavement.

"You can' do this!" The wife of the driver of the Volvo shouted to Dean, her gaze hostile. "The boy is hurt, he needs a hospital!"

"Ma'am, this is official FBI business, I suggest you stay out of it before I have you arrested for obstruction!" "And you," Dean looked to Elena. "Aiding and abetting?" He glanced over at Stefan like he was a piece of discarded trash. "Hope he's worth the congecial visits." Dean sneered at Elena, and her resulting angered look and the way she began to thrash against him even harder was a clear indication that she had started to play along. Dean looked to Sam "Get him out of here-" He then cast his glance over to the gathering crowd. "Show's over!"

Sam grabbed at Stefan's wrist and hauled him up to his feet. "Back up!"' Sam yelled to the crowd that kept pressing themselves in. He flashed his badge at them again to get them to disperse. The families did, the mom's with little kids in strollers, yanking them by their arms to keep them away from the weapons. The handful of teenagers and gawking adults didn't heed the warning, camera phones out. Sam waved his gun at them for emphasis. "I said _back up!" _ He yanked another smartphone away from another teen in a gray converse shirt and the other people who had cameras out finally took it as a cue and scattered like frightened geese.

Sam shoved Stefan through the thinning crowd.

"You can't send me back there!" Stefan struggled in the cuffs, doing a good impression of a terrified kid about to be sent to prison. "I ran because I was innocent!"

"You better shut up, you understand me?!" Sam barked at Stefan, pushing him harder, hearing as Elena screamed obscenities at him and Dean who led her away by her arm.

"Stop hurting him!"

They pushed the vampires through the crowd like this until they neared an empty unmarked white car parallel parked against the sidewalk. Dean slid his lock pick kit out of his sleeve and popped the lock open on the driver's side. He then opened the back seat and Sam shoved Stefan inside harshly and slammed the door, Dean doing the same to Elena on the other side.

Dean climbed into the driver's seat, and hot-wired the car while Sam kept an eye on the crowd.

The white Lincoln roared to life and Dean pulled it off the curb and down the street. A set of wooden rosary beads complete with a large crucifix hung on the rearview mirror and the car stereo blasted out the song in the old tape deck:

"_When peace, like a river, attendeth my way, _

_When sorrows like sea billows roll; _

_Whatever my lot, thou hast taught me to say, _

_It is well, it is well with my soul-"_

In the backseat Elena broke the cuffs off of Stefan's wrists. She gripped his dislocated shoulder and jerked it back into alignment with a quick, fast movement. Stefan grunted a scream, and drew his hand tight to his body.

"_It is well with my soul, _

_It is well, it is well with my soul. "_

Dean ripped the tape out of the deck mid old time religion and flung it out the window.

"Are you okay?" Elena's words were a breathy whisper, her hands moving from Stefan's shoulder to his neck.

Stefan grunted one last time, head dropping back against the stolen car. "I'll heal faster this time."

Elena's face contorted. "Why are you doing this?" This time her anger was directed at Stefan.

"I have to find Damon." Stefan's words were said through staccato breaths.

"How? By getting yourself _killed?" _Elena's hands hovered in, like she didn't know whether she was going to comfort Stefan or strangle him.

"He's my brother Elena," Stefan grunted again and flexed his hand which had been pale as bone earlier, but started to flood back with a tanned color like paint bleeding in a canvas. "I didn't come for him before-"

"He wouldn't want to be saved if it meant it _killed_ you Stefan!"

"_Hey!" _Dean snapped his head around to them with this bellowing roar. "We don't have time for your Sid and Nancy shit understand?"

Stefan stared at Dean but didn't answer, turning his gaze moment later out the window. Dean drove in the stolen car a short distance, turning onto a side street that hugged the stables of the livery.

Another horse, the color of a Hershey bar watched Dean from its corral as he pulled the car into a driveway made of hard packed dirt. There was no place nearby that would successfully conceal a giant Lincoln Town car, so Dean didn't bother wasting any time with trying. He threw the car into park and turned his eyes out the window to the crowd that was dispersing, but slowly, the trauma that had just happened to them wanting to keep them grouped together to talk about it. Dean couldn't see any of the vampires that he saw earlier among them, but he was far from calling it a blessing.

"You came here before." Dean turned towards the backseat to Stefan. "I don't care how many centuries ago it was, you need to show us where this tunnel starts, because we've got about 2 minutes before the Apple Dumpling Vampire Gang realizes we played them."

"_Actually – you don't."_

The voice was right at the driver's side window. The Vampire Dean had seen at the stables now stood inches from his face.

The Lincoln had crank style windows, and Dean tried to roll them up manually, but it only rolled one crank before the mechanism became jammed.

The vampire smiled in amusement "Having trouble getting it up Dean?" His razor sharp teeth detracted and he snapped his head through the half-mast window.

A harsh wail erupted a second later when Dean slammed open the driver side catching the vampire right in the chest and throwing him to the ground. He didn't stay down for long, but Dean was out of car in an instant, his machete drawn.

Something grabbed Dean's shoulder in an inhuman blur and slammed him to the ground at the feet of one of the horses.

"_Dean!" _

Dean heard Sam's cry of his name amidst the rumbled high pitched whinny of the horse. The animal reared back in fear, its iron clad hooves came down and cracked the packed dirt inches from Dean's neck. Dirt was kicked up in his face, billowing a dark brown fog like cloud. His machete spun away from his hand and underneath the horse's hooves. The animal whinnied and reared in fear at the sharp blade.

There came a sound like crunching metal, and the split moment image of Sam being tossed into the hood of the car, his body cracking the windshield.

"Sam!"

Dean's echoed scream for his brother came in a horror filled gaze as Sam rolled off the hood of the car and out of sight behind the Lincoln. The male vampire jumped up on the hood of the car then down on the ground like a lion from a rock about pounce a wildebeest. There came the sound of struggling and the noises Sam only made when he'd been attacked.

"_Sam!"_ Dean's fear became raged anger when he lost even the sounds of Sam's breathing under the hissing snapping sounds of the vampire snapping its fangs into something that broke like sinews. The echoed whinny of the horse's fear broke into his skull as he dodged the animal's flailing hooves, reaching for his machete, his vision stained a dark red at the noises he heard and the brother that he didn't.

A brunette in princess curls and plaid looked at the horse for a moment, like she was mad at the animal for taking a carnival prize from her. She parried the machete out of Dean's hand with her bare hand, a spray of dark blood coating his jacket. She straddled him, slamming his head down hard onto the packed dirt.

Pain shot up the back of Dean's skull, his vision whited out. He shook his head forcefully to clear it, hearing nothing but a ringing in his ears, his anger gone from red to white hot. The noises behind the car had stopped. He saw neither Stefan, nor Elena, but he didn't know if it was because they were out of sight, or that his vision had tunneled.

"_SAM!" _ Dean felt his chest explode outward like a bomb, "If you've killed my brother, you're all _dead_ do you hear me!"

The vampire spat something fowl which had the consistency of glue into Dean's eyes. He had enough experience with Vamps to know that it was venom; it burned his vision like nails scraping across his eyes.

"You've killed _hundreds _of my 'brothers' Dean," She slammed his head down again with an enormous crack; this time his vision was blanketed in black. "I'm simply returning the favor."

Dean's vision came back slowly, but it was still wrong, grays muted over a veil of blood red, turning the late evening into midnight.

"I never got to thank you for the Leviathans that you let out of Purgatory." The vampire leaned over him, hand pressed hard into his forehead, dark curls blocking out the streetlights, hissing a sound that resembled over a dozen feral cats. Another foamy line of saliva and venom fell onto Dean's face like rancid rain. "How about a kiss baby?" Her teeth detracted in a crinkling sound like a fire about to set the forest alight.

"How about you go to hell?" Dean was barely able to even _see._ But there was no time to dwell on if his blindness was permanent or not. He forced his mind away from the lost sense and went with Plan B: he reared back and head butted her, hard. She jerked back stunned, a movement that allowed Dean to feel down his leg and grab his switchblade. He aimed up and straight. He had heard enough noises from supernatural creatures rearing away to calculate where she would end up.

But nothing concerning the supernatural would ever fit into a rubric mold. The vampire dodged the movement, the blade instead catching her on her hand going right through her palm.

She screamed and pulled the blade out of her like it was a splinter. "You're going to pay for that!"

There came a slicing sound from behind and the vampire turned in time to see the other vampire's head roll off of his shoulder from Sam's machete. A crimson stain ran down the side of Sam's face from his ear to his chin, and he was breathing hard and heavy.

"You're not touching him again, you understand me?!" Sam was panting breath as hot as a lava, no matter how angry he was at his brother, the sight of Dean his _big_ brother, who seemed all but indestructible, down at the _feet_ of vampires was something he would never just ignore.

The vampire's eyes became the black color of death, "I dispatch _him_,"she squeezed Dean's neck hard enough to cause his consciousness to blur "Then _you!-"_

She reared like something had shocked her, the end of a wooden awl poked through her plaid shirt like a bleeding thorn.

Dean's neck was released as the vamp turned around in rage to stare at Elena with hate filled eyes.

"Dean!-" Sam grabbed at his brother's hand, pulling him back up onto his feet. Dean's eyes were translucent, scratched over like a blind man, trails of blood went down his skin. Sam didn't know how badly the damage was, or if Dean could even _see_ him, but he didn't have the luxury to panic. He snatched Dean's fallen machete up and set it in his brother's hand.

Dean grasped the blade, barely sight-filled eyes tracking the shadows that had taken the place of the real world. A year in Purgatory running from monsters had often times forced him to compensate for missing senses. A Banshee's wail had deafened him for days (at least he thought so, Purgatory had no real time), and he had to keep on constant alert on what was all around him, never sleeping, on the chance something attacked that he couldn't even hear. So being half blind now had switched that survival mode on, turning his hearing up like the volume adjustment on a speaker. But it wasn't like vampire hearing, it was still disorienting with the blood and pain from his eyes.

But Dean had _heard_ Sam, and it was more than enough motivation to shut out the pain.

"Bad move bitch!-" The vampire jerked the awl out of her body with a squelching sound. "Your Buffy the Vampire Slayer moves _don't work on me." _She flipped the awl around and aimed at Elena. "But they will work on you-"

The vampire's words died on her lips as Stefan threw himself on her at an impossible speed, slamming her up against the Lincoln's already shattered wind shield.

She growled a half choked sound like she'd been forced to eat rancid garbage. "Working with _hunters_-" She breathed a hot, hate filled growl in Stefan's face. "You aren't worth the energy it takes to kill you!"

Stefan raised her high by the neck like she was on a hangman's noose, before slamming back down with a rattling bang that cracked the glass apart. Before she could fall through the now jagged hole, he grabbed her arms smashing them both up through the roof of the car, the sounds of her wrists breaking echoed like pop shot. He did the same to her feet, tearing them through the metal of the hood until was she was pinned like she was strung out on a Medieval rack. He torqued her broken wrists inwards like locking mechanisms, and her scream tore across the stables, causing the corralled horses to rear up and try to break down their barricade, finally sending up a few screams of the tourists from a distance that none of them had the luxury to calculate.

Stefan raised his head up to Sam and Dean. "The entrance should be under the floorboards in back-"

Sam pulled Dean back towards a half hacked room with a floor lined in hay. A workman's table was scattered with iron horse shoes and rubber mallets, and more of hung suspended on cables overhead. Despite all the tourists who had paraded through moments before, the livery looked badly kept: the mallets had half rotten handles hay smelled sour and crawled with maggots.

Sam caught sight of Stefan leaning over the splayed out vampire, watching as he picked up the discarded awl and jammed it back into her body. "I'm not going to kill you," his threat resonating audibly back into the stable. "You're not worth the energy either." He twisted the awl hard like he was screwing it into her heart. Her wail tore apart the air. "You tell your little faction if they're as _stupid_ as you, then then I _will_ kill _them_-" He moved away from the carnage he created and into the barn.

Elena kicked up the hay with her dirt encrusted boots, the stench of the rotting grass wafted higher as she did so making Dean wish that that bitch had cut his nose off instead of blinding him. He made out a mass of her dark brown hair as her boot finally hit something with higher resonance, like there was something hollow underneath it.

"It's here!" She dropped down to her knees and tore away at the straw until she found an iron latched trap door. She pulled hard, but was jerked back down with resistance even stronger than her vampire's strength. She pulled harder, but it still wouldn't give. Stefan reached down and jerked the handle, the metal screeched discordantly, but didn't move the door enough to be noticeable. "It's reinforced iron," he jerked again with a screamed grunt that would have torn his arms off had he been human.

Dean pulled out his Colt aiming it at the latch he was able to see because of its contrasting darkness from the hay. "Where is it?"

"Six thirty," Sam responded watching as Dean lowered the gun's barrel right at the center bolt of the ring.

Dean fired three solid rounds at the direction Sam had given him. The floorboards were solid walnut, aged how many hundreds of years the stable had been built, and the ring and brackets solid iron all the way through. But it wasn't about destroying the lock, it was about hitting it at the right angle so it _could_ be destroyed. And even half blind Dean was still a marksman. The tip of a square headed bolt blew apart at the last bullet, and Dean heard the supporting lock beneath give just enough. "Pull it now."

This time when Elena and Stefan both jerked up on the trapdoor, it came up with a splitting groan, the door slamming hard against the hay.

They dropped one by one into a stone walled cave that trickled water overhead and blew a thick stale smell at them.

The tunnel ran long in the darkness and their shoes were damp in stagnant smelling water. They moved in a run away from the door several dozen feet before stopping for lack of breath.

"Dean hey!" Sam righted his brother, who despite his earlier marksmanship, wasn't standing as straight as he should in the standing water. "Hey hey, hey, look at me-!" Sam set a hand under Dean's right eye, shining his flashlight into his face. A dried puddle of blood rung around both his lower eyelids, and a bloomed yellowed stain coated his pupils, clouding them almost completely over.

"Really bad choice of words Sammy," Dean grunted and smacked Sam's hands away from his face.

Sam turned to Stefan. "Give him your blood-"

Dean grunted again, the pain his eyes ramped up as some of the adrenaline died down. "_Sammy,"_ that word meant 'not a chance in hell' to Sam's suggestion.

"You didn't give me a choice, so I'm not either!" Sam retorted snapped at Dean, he swept his eyes to Stefan "I saved your life back there, and I'm cashing in – blood for blood-." There was no hint of a suggestion in his remark.

Fangs ripped into skin on Dean's right, and the salty heady smell of blood hung centimeters from Dean's mouth. "Take it, it should heal you."

There was no chance to debate, to weigh the choices, the hole and the smell of the vampire blood erased them like pencil marks. Dean swiped a thick trickle of blood off of Stefan's wrist, and smelled the thick coppery smell of it. "You gotta be kidding me," He made a noise of disgust but sucked at it like jam, screwing his face into more disgust a second later. There was no magic trick result, his vision was still blurry, red and barely there. The only difference was that his mouth bore the salty taste of blood. "Well that was disgusting."

"These tunnels go back five miles before they reach the plantation," Stefan looked down the endless darkness in front of him. He turned back towards Sam and Dean.

"Awesome," Dean ground out, trying not to spit out the vampire blood that he still tasted like a shot of rancid whiskey.

"We're going to have to do this at 'vamp speed' or we're never getting there," Before Sam could react Stefan had grabbed ahold of his wrist like they were awkwardly holding hands in middle school. "Elena get his arm."

Elena looked afraid to touch Dean like he might chop her head off just on principal, while Dean was trying to figure out how this could be accomplished without his feet being worn down into bloody nubs in the process. He finally ended both their silent questioning by grabbing at her hand. "No killing me on our first 5 k run sweetheart, understand?"

"No one's killed anyone yet," Elena insisted, her dark eyes visible to Dean even through the blindness. "You can trust us."

"Close your eyes."

"Seeing isn't a problem for me Stargate Atlantis," Dean returned to Stefan. "Make the jump."

They remained there for several seconds then there came a rush of wind, and a blur of speed, and they vanished down the long and endless tunnel.


	9. Chapter 9

**CHAPTER NINE**

"_It will have blood, they say; blood will have blood."_

~William Shakespeare

**xxxxxXxxxx**

The hallways were a blur of gray stone and steel and smelled of rot and mold. Those smells were soon joined by the smell of blood, and the _'patter, patter'_ sound that it made trailed behind Damon as he ran past the emptiness. He hadn't been in these rooms in almost 70 years and the assault of horrific memories were almost as bad the feeling of the vervain bullets that were ripping into his skin.

Damon had endured 5 years-worth of torturous pain, compared to that, the bullet wound was like a mosquito bite. But the pain was still burning, stinging, and he felt them lodged deep inside him. He stopped down an endless hallway of brick and empty steel cells bathed in a gray shadowed light from domed hallogen bulbs above him embedded into the rock. Damon knew they were the same grow bulb lights as in the lab because the light burned and sizzled his flesh and through the gunshot holes.

He came to a cell built over an archway naturally formed from the rocks of the caves that built this entire passageway. Before any of this hell, Damon remembered these caves from his youth. He'd discovered them the summer when he turned 13 during a sunny day of hide-and-go-seek with Stefan, and spent an entire day getting lost in them, listening to Stefan's muffled calls above him as he tried to find Damon's hiding spot, munching on a freshly baked muffin from Ms. Abilene's kitchen.

The smell of the cave now smelled far from hot muffins, it reeked of stale blood, decaying clay falling down on his head like rain. Damon's couldn't fight the pain any longer, and he halted so fast that his feet had a moment to catch up, swaying his body forward. He grabbed onto one of the bars and righted himself before reaching with the thumb and index finger of his other hand deep into one of the bloody holes. The pain came sharp and lightning quick as he pulled the first bullet out from just under his collarbone. The second bullet was right above his navel, had lodged itself somewhere inside his stomach. The pain of the vervain was corrosive enough; but combined with the acid leaking out of his stomach, it felt like a fire lit railway spike was being jammed inside him. Damon jerked his hand out with a stifled grunt, fingers bloody. He turned his head down the hallway, finding nothing but shadows, hearing nothing but his own harsh breathing. He craned his head sideways in-between the bars of the cell, bracing one of them in his mouth, bitting down hard into the iron.

He dug his fingers back into the bullet wound, widening it to get a better reach. The pain this time was blinding, the bullet moving in the acid of his stomach. His grunted scream died on the iron in between his teeth, and he pushed his hand in deeper, reaching, grabbing until he closed his hand on it and pulled it out. He collapsed to his knees, letting the bloody bullet fall away to stain the floor a bright rose petal red. The smell of his blood came on like an opium high and detracted his fangs involuntarily. He pushed forward on the bars, shoving the feeling down as far as it could go. He grabbed a clump of something powdery that reeked of decay from the floor of the cell and smeared it in the bullet holes to throw off the scent of his blood.

There came a noise ahead of him, the sound a rock makes when it's thrown against a wall. Damon glanced at it, but he had been alive long enough to know when there was a planned distraction.

The hallway in front of him continued on in stone for 30 feet before it curved sharply to the right and vanished. The sound from before happened again, echoing once like a skimming stone on the water. A shadow emerged from the hallway.

"Nice try with the crappy theatrics!" Damon called out. Hiding himself wasn't going to do shit, and he was never one to hide himself. So he might as well start what whomever they were wanted to start.

"_Damon!"_

The voice made Damon's pain take second place. He watched the shadow, "Elena?" His next words died before they were born as Elena shouted again.

"_Stefan!"_

Damon barely had a chance to process Stefan's name before the horrendous sounds of his brother's screams shook the stone hallway.

Damon didn't call out his brother's name like he did with Elena, didn't take time to process the fact that now he was a cannibal of vampires, a rabid animal let loose on his own kind. He only processed the scream.

He ran the hallway at a blurred speed, rounding a curve and came out to another hallway that matched the length of the one he had just left, lined in cells, the light continuing to burn through his injured flesh.

There was no sign of Elena. A man's body cloaked in a black hoodie was sprawled upon the stone floor, face and legs bent away from Damon, a stake sticking through the back of the black fabric.

Damon ran to the fallen figure, kneeling down. "Stef!-"

The body rolled over and the face shrouded in its black hood, stared up at Damon. "Sorry," The leering smile of someone who was _not _Stefan opened his mouth and over a dozen miniature fangs detracted "Wrong guy." The other vampire lunged at Damon, ripping the stake out of his back like it was nothing and launched it at Damon's back.

Damon deflected the attack, jerking the stake a hard left into the air where it broke it half against the stone floor. He lit to his feet, slamming the other vampire against the wall. The other 'vampire' was one of the ones that Damon had seen lurking just out of the way in the labs when Wes was vivisecting him. The vampire would have matched his strength blow for blow, had the serum Wes injected him with not given Damon, besides the obvious mind tearing side effect, ultra heightened strength even beyond his own capabilities.

Damon squeezed the sinews of the vampire's neck as easily as if he were juicing an orange. The vampire grunted, but he didn't look as shocked as someone, vampire or not, should when they were being choked under. "You _might_ not have gotten the memo, but I'm a cannibal now, which means you're going to pay _so hard _for this in a second!-"

The vampire's lips pulled back into a sneered laughter half died out form his lack of breath. "You're getting pretty strong there tiger."

Damon squeezed harder, rushing the blood up to the other vampire's neck, like a fire cracker about to pop.

"_Cocky son-of-a-bitch aren't you?" _

The shadow that spoke those words broke away from the cell it spooned and became a man in black leather. He was a good head taller than his vampire counterpart, black hair spiked to match his clothes holding out a cellphone with a prominent base speaker like he was advertising it for sale. The phone had an audio track display paused in mid recording, the lines of audio feedback glowing brightly the shadowed lights of the tunnels. "You're probably entitled, we _did_ just jerk you around with our little baiting trick-" the vampire backed the track up and the sound of Elena's voice came through the speaker. He paused it there again when Damon looked two seconds away from ripping out his throat. "But maybe you should question if we _are_ tricking you?" The vampire had a thick accent, resembling someone Scottish who had lived a fair share of their life on the Louisiana Bayou. "Clearly your loved ones are not here, Damon. But then, how did we get this-?" He unpaused the audio again.

During that same game of hide-and-seek when Damon had first discovered these caves, Stefan had wandered off on the edges Abilene's property to look for him and had walked right into a steel bear trap laid out by poachers; Damon had heard Stefan's scream through the cave walls.

It was the same kind of sound coming from the speakers. The realization of just what that meant froze the blood to a standstill in Damon's veins.

The second vampire turned towards the first, an amused look was shared between them before the first vampire shifted the look over to Damon. "Your brother's a screamer," the amusement turned cocky, masochistic, "He must make the women happy-"

The frozen feeling melted from lava hot anger. Damon rushed the vampire, jumping on him so fast that the other vampire's reaction time seemed almost human. Damon bit hard into his neck, biting, tearing, blood pouring into his mouth.

The blood became hot, corrosive acid hot, in Damon's mouth and he recoiled as it burned down his throat, gagging with a hand to his neck to try and breathe around the burning. He plummeted to his knees, colliding hard to the packed dirt, vomiting up blood gone black in his stomach.

A pair of black shoes and the tails of a blood stained lab coat hung on the top of Damon's vision. "Your reaction time is improving Damon," Wes's voice echoed around the empty cells. "And your speed-" Wes sighed in a euphoric tone like he had just discovered a cure-all for all childhood diseases. His lab coat collar was also stained in blood and he bore massive black bruises on his face.

"_You're a dead man!" _

"Why is that?" Wes looked down on Damon's form as he writhed on the ground. "In the interest of science I need know. Is it because I tortured you? Or because I tortured Stefan? -As your body starts to scream from starvation, which will become more important, Family Blood, or Vampire-Blood?"

Damon's insides felt like they were being vacuum sucked out of him and dropped steaming into a pile of acid; his mind felt lit on fire. He would have gladly accepted dying if it weren't for two things: the first was finding whomever made his brother scream like that and shredding their limbs into ribbons; and the second, which came slower, but was still there- the fact that he had taken in vampire blood, but his body rejected it the way he had done with Wes' blood when it had been forced on him, and he needed to understand _why. _

Wes glared in superiority down at Damon like he was about to put down a stray dog.

Damon groaned, and gaged again, rolling up on his arms, he reached out with his hand, and like a trip wire, knocked Wes's feet out from under him.

Wes hit the ground hard and Damon rolled up on him slamming his head down hard against the rock. He dug his thumbs into Wes' eyes pulling back the lids, moving his fingers under Wes's eyeballs. "It's because you tortured Stefan-"

Wes screamed, and blood began to stream from his eyes like tears.

Damon dug in deeper, feeling his thumbnail tear through the muscles in the back of Wes's eyes "And because you tortured _me!_-" He scooped Wes' eye, only one tug away from removing it.

Something solidly heavy, dropped down on the back of Damon's head, shattering into powder and pebbles. The blow dazed him, even with his new found strength. He lost focus on his torture and turned.

A face emerged from the shadow that he didn't understand. So he did the only thing he could, he lunged at the confusion.

The sound of his neck breaking rang in his ears before he dropped and the stone and earth dissolved to black.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Route I-90

"How do we even know they came here?" Matt drove Caroline's Toyota around the road that hugged to the Virginia forest like a skin tight dress. High above the trees scattering of stars had emerged in white dots across the early night. "The car was ditched back more than three miles away-"

"This road is east," Caroline's blonde hair flicked back and forth like a lightning bug's glow in the passenger seat. "Okay? Parkesburg is _east_, they _came_ this way!"

Matt had come back to the Boarding House with Jeremy and told them what had happened at the Grille. He had also told them Elena's request, which no one had wanted to honor. They had left town in 10 minutes, but Caroline's car blew a tired 30 minutes into the drive making them even further behind then they were already to Elena and Stefan.

"How do we know that this isn't a trap made by those Hunters?" Jeremy asked from the backseat.

"We don't, "Matt went for brutally honest, which did little to help the situation, but he was to on edge to offer even made up reassurances. "But it doesn't matter-"

"You let Stefan and Elena wander off with _Hunters _Matt!" Caroline jerked her head at him like a blow, "Their safety _matters_ okay?" Her voice was high and as close to being panicked as she could get without actually being panicked. Two hours ago Matt had come into the boarding house without Stefan, or Elena, or even _Katherine _and had told them all what had happened. And Caroline had gone from begrudgingly listening to her mother's orders to stay out of the FBI's way, to fighting off Matt's attempt to block her getting into her own car. "Whoknows _what_ they did to them, what if tortured them for information, or just _tortured _them?-"

"If this _is_ a trap Caroline," Matt cut Caroline off mid panic. "It doesn't matter, because they're out friends, we're helping them either way" The scenery became a dizzying blur as he white knuckled the wheel and floored the accelerator.

"I can't believe you let Elena talk you into going off alone with those guys," Jeremy's head poked up from the back seat, his expression angry.

"I didn't _let _her," Matt growled out these words. "There wasn't any time to refuse Jer-"

"They're _Hunters, _Matt, "Jeremy growled right back. "Their first instinct is to _kill _vampires!" He may be younger than Elena (undead or not, he still considered himself her little brother). But he was fiercely protective of his sister. There was forever a running joke about how Elena had throngs of people willing to throw themselves into danger just to save her life. But before Original Hybrids out for her Doppelgänger blood, or even Stefan and Damon came along, he had been there to watch out for her, even during his stoner phase.

"You don't think I don't know that?" Matt turned his head almost completely around, nearly colliding with Jeremy. "You weren't there! You didn't have a gun held to your face-"

"Yeah and if I _did _I would've stopped them from dragging Stefan and _my sister _into some sort of trap-"

"_We don't know it was a trap!"_

"_Stop it!"_

Bonnie's voice was loud in the back seat, heavy. "This isn't going to bring them back!" She was still technically a ghost, but because she straddled the divide between the corporeal world and Purgatory, she was allowed to feel human senses, touch taste, smell, even her own organs functioning within her body. And the thing that she felt most right now was the hammering of her heart.

"_Matt look out!"_

Caroline's scream jerked Matt's head around back towards the windshield, where the road curved sharply to the left. Matt jerked the wheel hard, but a second later realized that Caroline hadn't been screaming about the curve but rather at the sight of a red Mini Cooper halfway down in an embankment and halfway in road in front of them.

Matt slammed on the breaks hard, the car swerved on the road, tires smoking, the front end smashed into the Mini Cooper's bumper, stopping midway in the metal.

Matt was the first one to come out of the shock that had just happened, a mass of dusty airbag sat under his face and he pulled it away like extra skin.

"Matt!" Caroline's voice was to his right, "Are you okay?" She felt his hand on her arm, the passenger side airbag kept her from going through the windshield, but she was a vampire, and wasn't worried about herself.

Matt coughed hard from the pain of the impact of the airbag on his chest.

Caroline jerked her head back to Bonnie and Jeremy in the backseat, they were a tangle of arms, as Jeremy had thrown himself over Bonnie moments before the car had made impact. "Bonnie!" Caroline could only see Jeremy, but after a moment Bonnie's form wriggled out from underneath him.

Bonnie looked shaken but unhurt. She turned her brown eyes over to Jeremy, furious. No matter how her friends skirted around and avoided it, she was _dead, _she had no life to save, but they did. But before she could release the anger and _fear _that she had about, especially to Jeremy, there came a hard ripping sound that tore her thoughts away from her.

Caroline ripped apart the canvas of the airbag that was still surrounding Matt, allowing him more air to breathe, which he did with a painful sounding gasp, then did the same with herself.

The airbag came away like a stage show curtain revealing the damaged and torn end of the Mini Cooper, bearing Elena's license tag.

"Oh my god!" Caroline ripped off her seatbelt and was out of the car in a flash.

The doors on the right side of the Mini Cooper both stood wide open.

"Elena!" Caroline ducked her head inside the car, it was completely empty, but the wheel was turned at a jagged angle, the passenger seat was lifted forward and a crimson stain of blood was splattered on the back of the headrest. Caroline could still smell its coppery smell, which meant that the blood was still fresh.

A foot ahead of the Mini Cooper stood a black muscle car. Jeremy ran to it, its doors were shut, and when he jiggled the door handles, he found them all locked.

Matt climbed out of the car, almost at a slanted angle. "Are they in there?!" He asked this both to Caroline and Jeremy.

"It's empty!" Jeremy was the first to answer, he pounded on the glass, trying to get the window to smash.

"There's blood on the backseat!" Caroline emerged from the Mini Cooper. "Smells only a few hours old!-"

Jeremy abandoned banging on the empty Impala and swept his eyes in a circle around the tree line that grew like weeds along the side of the road. "Elena!" his sister's name echoed through the landscape.

"Stefan!" Caroline's shouted into the trees. Nothing echoed back except the sounds of the forest.

"_Elena!" _ Bonnie picked up the shout. Her eyes swept over the landscape in a circle, into the shadow of the trees. "Can you hear anything?" Bonnie demanded of Caroline.

Caroline listened, but shook her head, she was about to try again, but then a fierce pungent smell assaulted her nose. She turned her gaze up to the embankment to where the smell was coming from.

At the base of an old rain drenched pine tree, a group of black crows were cawing and plucking at the bark, fighting each other for a chance to get at the tree. At first Caroline thought they were picking apart a dead animal, but as she drew nearer, instead of an animal carcass she saw a long bladed half buried in the grass, circled by a thick puddle of blood.

Caroline's heart ramped up to a triple beat, she picked up the bloody knife, when her friends saw it, their eyes transferred into horrified shock.

"_Stefan!" _ Caroline's shout was echoing and loud. "_Elena!_-Are you happy now?!" Caroline thrust her anger onto Matt, throwing the knife down hard at her feet, the world spinning dizzyingly around her. "This was _all _a trap! Those Hunters probably dragged them into the woods and ripped them apart!-"

"They're not dead Caroline!" Bonnie insisted. "Elena and Stefan are both vampires, if either one of them died I would have seen it-which means we can still _find _them!-" Bonnie stepped over to Caroline and lowered her friend's hands down from where she was tearing them through her hair. "We're going to find them-"

Jeremy roamed his eyes over the forest floor, looking past the fallen branches and dead leaves to the dirt underneath. Ever since he had become a Hunter he had developed a heightened sense for finding things. It wasn't a true heightened sense like vampire super hearing or night vision. He was simply able to notice things more acutely. Over the fallen brown and dead debris were a set of ridged treadmarks "I count over ten sets of tracks-" he thrust his chin out towards the forest thick with trees. "Some of them are thicker like something was being dragged- they lead over that ridge," Jeremy didn't waste time pointing again, he simply climbed up over the crest of the grass without waiting for the others.

"We can get to Parkesburg faster if we drive," Matt insisted.

"Our cars are useless," Bonnie insisted, staring at the torn and broken Mini cooper and Camry.

"Not all of them," Jeremy grabbed a jagged rock from the roadside and smashed a hole through the driver's side window of the black Impala. He reached his hand through the hole and popped the lock, opening the door. He slid in the e driver's seat and reached under the dash by the steering wheel, smelling more blood inside the car. He pulled out the steering wires and connected them, the car roared to life with, the A track player blasting out AC/DC at his face. He popped the passenger side door open. "Scout out that trail!" he shouted to Caroline. "Bonnie and I will meet you in Parkesburg! Call if you find anything!"

Bonnie opened the passenger side door with a squeak and climbed inside. Jeremy roared the Impala to life just as Caroline grabbed Matt before he could protest and disappeared into the woods in a blur.

**xxxxXxxxx**

The sound of the water drops magnified like a storm with how fast Stefan was running; when he had first started running at the livery, he had no idea how long the hall actually was. Abilene's plantation house was at least 5 miles back, but the tunnel seemed to run longer than that, zigzagging back and forth so that he had to keep avoiding the walls, and avoid smacking Sam into them.

Even with all his super strength and endurance, the laws of physics still applied, in that Sam, who couldn't run at the same speed, ended up being dragged for most of it. As well as avoiding the walls, Stefan also resorted to pulling Sam onto his back up doing a weird "spider monkey/piggy back" maneuver, otherwise the speed he was going would have torn the Hunter's legs clean off his body. If Sam Winchester had any objections with being _carried_, the super high speed drowned out any of his complaints.

What stopped Stefan from his flat out running, was not another wall, or even another vampire, it was a cat: a orange tabby that shot out of the air like it had been catapulted. Stefan jerked to a stop. The momentum jerked Sam forward into Stefan, then back like a derailing train, slamming the 6'4 man into him.

But both Hunter and Vampire managed to turn on their reflexes in time and righted themselves onto their feet before they met with the ground.

The cat hissed and spat at them, ears bared back, its eyes luminescent in the light of long florescent bulbs that hung suspended from the stone ceiling. It swiped with a paw of needle like claws, turning from Sam to Stefan, backing up in high agitation like it recognized Stefan as something unnatural.

Elena was breathing in a hard, startled kind of way, her neck and shoulders a ring of deeply colored welts the size of finger marks. Even with all of her supernatural strength, Dean Winchester was still over 6 feet tall and weighed more than twice her size, so having to haul him across the cave as she ran wasn't something that didn't come without consequences.

"How did a cat get in here?" Elena watched the tabby run a hard left, it's orange fur dying out down a long hallway. "I didn't see any cracks big enough for an animal to squeeze through."

"Somebody must've brought it in," Dean rationalized.

Elena turned to him, half confused. "Why would they do that?"

"Your guess is as good as mine, maybe Darius wanted to make a Kitty Vamp." Dean fumbled into his jacket and pulled out a small black flashlight and shined the light in down the corridor where the cat had disappeared. He rubbed a hand hard at his eyes, and Elena saw that they were still opaque, and unfocused. Stefan's blood hadn't healed him enough yet, but he didn't give any indication other than the swipe at his eyes that he was injured.

Dean glanced down the hallway, then back over to Stefan, "So which way?"

"I'm not sure," Stefan answered.

"What do you mean you're not sure?" Dean didn't sound very happy with Stefan's answer.

"I've never actually been down here," Stefan responded to the Hunter.

"You said you came here for summer camp every year," Dean snapped back.

"_Above ground," _Stefan snapped back just as harshly. "Damon was the only one who ever came here. After what happened, we weren't allowed out of our father's sight."

Elena's brows knit into confusion "After _what_ happened, Stefan?"

One of the things that Stefan would always love about Elena was her concern and compassion for people, and that included him. But there were still things that he still couldn't tell her; because it ran much deeper than just himself. "I'll tell you when we get Damon and get out of here, alright?"

Elena heard the way Stefan said his brother's name, the way it sounded like a longing for air, and she responded with a nod.

Stefan turned to the uneven stone wall on his right. The wall was solid, made up entirely of a gray rocks that had been piled one on top of the other like masonry bricks without any mortar. The stones were covered in so much peppered black dirt it was hard to decipher if it was the _rock_ that was gray, or the dirt that almost enveloped it. He passed his hand along the rough edges of the wall, and felt as something tickled his palm.

"There's air moving behind here."

Dean stepped forward, using his hands to feel forward until he was at the stone wall. He tapped the butt of his flashlight against the rock, the noise resonated. "It sounds hollow, there's something back here."

"Like another hallway?" Elena asked.

"There's a way to find out," Dean returned, turning Stefan. "You need to pull a Vamp strength move and punch through this."

"Dean-_"_ Sam stepped over to Dean and Stefan, holding up the beam of a flashlight he produced from his jacket pocket. He shined the light up to the roof of the cave. The rocks formed half a vaulted ceiling, curved in two places. The wall resting on the arched apexes that were lined in cracks like the skin of an aged woman, branching outwards to the seam of the wall. "This wall is load bearing- If we try and knock it down those cracks will bring it down on top of us."

"There's something on the other side of here, Sam," Dean returned. Dean raised the beam of his flashlight to the same spot that Sam's light was shining. "And given what this place is, it's no accident in the architecture-"

"But those _cracks_ aren't architecture Dean," Sam practically growled out to his brother. "This cave is over a hundred years old, the amount of moisture in the air probably rotted half these stones away."

"No," Stefan stepped between the two of them, not needing a flashlight to see the stone above them like Sam and Dean had. Upon a second glance he saw that the marks in the stone weren't webbed or cracked design that would come from a rock being naturally worn away with time, but in deliberately deeply carved grooves Stefan drew to an image he had almost long forgotten. The very first summer he had visited Abilene. He had snuck down to the kitchen well after dark to swipe an apple from the pantry. It had been past 10 at night, and only the cook, an aged woman with ebony skin was still up. The pantry was wide open, it's shelves stocked with canned goods, hanging vegetables and fresh fruit. Stefan watched the woman root through the dried jars of spices at the back of one of the shelves. He had slowed his pace down to a tip toe and snatched one of the red apples sitting in an overly full barrel just behind the cook. He was about to make off with his stolen treasure, when he had heard whispering, then the heavy sound of something being pushed away. He hadn't been able to see anything behind the form of the cook because she hadn't been a small woman, but as he had backed away he had felt a pile of dust fall on his head, and when he had looked up he saw a section of wood being scraped along the pantry roof, having followed a groove.

"He's right," Stefan said this to Sam about Dean. "This tunnel was designed as a passage for the Underground Railroad, it would have been made with dozens of secret passages for runaway slaves to hide in case bounty hunters ever found this place-" Stefan backed away from the stone and studied the wall in its entirety, looking up from the topmost stone hidden the shadow, to the very bottom stones fused to those on the ground. He felt along the stones with the flat of his hands, until he felt the rush of air on his hand from before, he pushed the stone under his hand in, and felt it give, until it formed a handhold big enough for him to grip with his fingers, he pulled at it hard, and felt the wall give just the slightest give.

"Elena," Stefan didn't let go of the grip he had on the wall as he called out to her, "there should be another handhold near this one-"

Elena spanned her hand next to Stefan's and slid it away from him in a parallel along the stone wall, until she reached a place where the stone was jagged, and cut into her palm, but at the same moment she felt the thin trickle of her blood, she also felt something blow against it.

"I got it!" She pushed her hand into the stone like Stefan had done and it gave into a handhold slightly larger than her hand. She jammed both hands inside the small space for better leverage and pulled, hard.

The wall moved like a warped sliding door. Even with as hard as she and Stefan were pulling with their combined strengths, the progress they were making did nothing to reveal what was on the other side. Elena dug her boots into the stone and pulled harder, her muscles turning to molten liquid.

The wall finally came apart more like a hidden panel in a palace suite.

Stefan barely had time to take in the image of more stone, and a shallow light coming in from somewhere before he heard booming crack from above them.

The archway that the movable wall rested on had cracked deeply upwards. The hallway began to shake like it was in an earthquake, and pieces of the stone ceiling smashed to the ground like a hail storm.

Dean jumped back, narrowly missing a piece of rock the size of a dinner plate being impaled into his head.

"Elena!" Stefan called out Elena's name as an enormous piece of stone broke free from the highest part of the archway and hurled itself towards her.

Elena looked up and saw the falling mass, but before her instinct to run at high velocity kicked in, she felt herself being yanked backwards by Dean.

The rock face ceiling had it, whatever moving the wall had done to it was a lethal move, pieces of the stone above began smashing down the wall like crushing a soda can, an entire foot of the wall blew away into pebbled powder.

"Elena!" Stefan coughed out the dust that threw itself down his windpipe, "Move!" A crack, louder than anything he had heard before shook the entire hallway like a roar, a rock the size of a baseball, dropped and smashed right into the side of Sam's head. Sam dropped to his knees, dazed, blood matting into his hair.

The ceiling finally fell apart, another baseball sized chunk of rock dropped down towards Sam, who still struggled to get to his feet.

"_Sam!"_

Dean yelled his brother's name, and Stefan saw Sam's hunter instinct kick in; he tried to roll away from the stone, but the blow to his head left him stunned, and he wasn't moving fast enough.

Stefan shot forward and grabbed Sam under the arms and sped him backwards into the passageway the wall had opened up as the stones and rocks collapsed apart, swallowing them both.


	10. Chapter 10

**CHAPTER TEN**

"_Don't we all? You, me? We deserve to be loved-I _deserve_ to be LOVED!"_

~"Crowley"

"Supernatural" Episode: "Sacrifice"

**xxxxxXxxxx**

**[**_"Hey, Sam, Sammy, you with me?"_**]**

"Hey-"

**[**"_Sammy-Damnit!"_ **]**

"Sam!"

Sam blinked back into a gray darkness, Stefan's face barely three inches away from him. He coughed up dust and debris, his head felt caved in, and he felt the warm blood matted into his hair. He was lying face down in a pile of cracked stone; he rolled over turning the gray darkness into a dull gray light. He pushed himself up with his hands, coughed again and moved to stand up.

Stefan offered him a hand, and he took it. When he got to his feet, the world slanted sickeningly, he shook off the feeling and tried to focus on what was in front of him.

He and Stefan were standing alone in a room made of fat brick stone the same gray as the ones that littered their feet.

Behind him was an avalanche of stone and tumbled over bricked swirled in a thick cloud of dust.

"Dean!_" _ Sam groped at the wall, pulling at a piece of stone the size of his fist. His movements sent the stones above into a sliding movement pelting sharp shards of rock onto his arms and exposed hands already molten with scraped cuts. He pulled down another stone, setting off another miniature avalanche; but for all the stones that fell, more slid into the gaps they created, never creating a hole in the tumble down mass that had taken the place of the wall.

"_Dean!"_ Sam shouted into the stones that towered over him, but they were too thick and drowned out his voice beyond the reach of an echo. He turned back to Stefan "Can you hear anything?"

The room they were in was small, and 8 feet by 8 feet stone square. High up on the wall that sat on the right of the fallen stones was a narrowed resembling an air duct, It was about a foot long, no wider than half a hand span, and barred, pouring a scant amount of light through.

Stefan was standing a foot away from Sam; he drew closer turned his head towards the fallen stones, listening, "No," his voice rang with anger "The stone's too thick; it's absorbing any noise-"

"Damnit!" Sam wanted to rip away at the small rocks until he pulled the whole damn mass down, but he had no idea how dependent each stone was to another. He had already taken too many chances with moving the stones that he had already; one wrong move could cause a cave in. He swore again harder and angrier at the rocks that separated him from Dean and jerked his phone out of his jacket pocket which was now coated in a spray of rock dust.

They were who knows how many feet underground, so the chances of getting a usable cellphone signal was rated at zero. But, Sam tried anyway, raising the phone high in the air, walking it to around by the tiny window, and he was rewarded with a solitary bar across his screen. He took the chance and raised his hand to dial Dean on his speed dial.

His hand skittered across the screen before the call could connect, the bar faded just another sound came" the sound of a cat's hiss.

Sam reached for his gun, taking aim into shadows at the right wall next to the window.

Butted against a shadowed corner was an overturned wooden bedframe, its metal supports slat for an absent mattress were littered with pebbles. The hiss came again, and the orange tabby cat from the hallway crept out like a panther, hissing and spitting at Stefan full in the face, whiskered bared in anger, eyes gone a reflective yellow in the shadows. A pale hand reached from behind the bedframe and grabbed the cat's body. The animal hissed again and shot across the stone floor, searching out the darkened shadowed corner across from the first.

A bare foot emerged onto the pile of pebbled rubble, the hand reaching out to grab purchase onto the stone floor.

Sam watched as a girl unfolded herself from behind the bedframe and stood up barefoot on the floor. Her long dark brown hair had gone gray from the dust of the crumbled wall. She wore a thin white cotton dress, shredded, dirty; her arms hugged her chest over a stain of red blood.

"It's okay," Sam watched the girl like he would watch a feral animal, not sure of what she was, even though she seemed harmless. "We're not going to hurt you." He made a show of raising his gun and both his hands in the air to seem as least threatening as possible.

"What's your name?" Stefan asked her, taking the same cautionary stance as Sam, staying in the same position, keeping his voice low.

The girl jerked her head to Stefan like a caged animal, hugging her arms to her chest, eyes fearful like he might attack her. Her head jerked again, back to Sam, and her eyes widened like she saw who he was for the first time. "Agent Jennings?-"She moved her arms away from her chest and something white fell to the ground: a dirty, threadbare stuffed polar bear.

The revelation of who she was hit Sam like a punch in the face. "Marissa?"

Marissa's face contorted into something half pain filled, half relief at hearing the sound of her own name, like she hadn't heard it in a long time. She was older, barely a teenager, but her eyes, they were still the same, the ones from the alley.

She shot forward moving into the small amount of light that came from the tiny narrow window. It had to be pitch black outside now, but whatever the source of the light was made her scream like someone had cut her.

"_Ahh!"_ Marissa shrank back. She grabbed at her cheek, which had been burned a bright red like it had been melted, sizzling against the shaft of light. "Please make it stop!"

Stefan watched the girl holding her hand over her burned flesh. He slid his ring off his finger and placed his hand in the shaft of light, retracting it a second later when he experienced the same reaction that she had. "She's been turned." He shook his hand out like he had just dipped it in scalding water. "The light must mimic sunlight-keep her from breaking out at night."

"No!" Marissa shook her head frantically, "It's not true! He told me," a sob tore from her throat, "But it's not true!"

"Who told you?" Stefan questioned. "Was it Dr. Maxfield?"

Marissa shook her head like each move was painful, tumbles of her hair moving frantically around her. "He never talked to me; it was the vampire-"

Stefan's focus suddenly intensified a thousand fold. "What Vampire?"

"The one they just brought in!-" Her head raised up to Sam, eyeing the blood on his skin with wide eyes, her veins began to protrude, and a harsh ripping sound emitted, from her mouth which she threw open with a gasp, a set of sharp fangs pulling down from her top set of teeth. "Why does that keep happening-what's happening to me?-" Terrified breathing shook her frame.

Stefan got right down next to the girl, but she backed away like he would attack her. "It's okay-," Marissa started to cry harder. "No, no, look at me, look," Stefan let the blood run up to his eyes and drew down his fangs, "Just take a deep breath and they go away, see?" He breathed in and drew his fangs back, his face returned to normal.

Marissa breathed like she was hyperventilating, but then slowed down her breath, eyes damp with tears.

"That's good, that's good," Stefan continued to coax her until her veins recessed back into her skin and her fangs drew back up. "You're okay," he set a hand into her hair "Alright, its okay?" She shuddered at his touch. "Can you tell me about the other vampire?" Stefan kept his voice low, like he was trying to avoid spooking a deer. "Do you remember what he looked like?"

"He was young: black hair, green eyes-" Marissa's words tripped over each other like a fast paced train on a collision course through a forest. "They came to get him in his cell, they brought me there for him to-" Her body started to shake and her words trailed off.

"Marissa, you have to focus-" Sam knelt kept his height at its full level, his voice demanding, to stave her off from freaking out entirely. "What happened after they took you to the vampire?"

Marissa started to shake harder, like someone freezing. "He bit me," she grabbed at her hair, and when the long strands were pulled away from her face Sam could see a trail of puncture marks down the left side of her neck, halfway down to her shoulder, many of them were almost completely healed, but the skin was caked in dried blood. "But I was still alive! When he was done he told me to lie still, and when Dr. Maxfield came back he attacked him and told me to run-" She broke off and looked down at the fallen bear that had landed by her bare feet, she picked it up and hugged it furiously, like she was still that 7-year-old-girl from the alleyway. "But the lights in the hallway kept _burning_ me, and I don't know where else to go!-" sobs shook her thin frame like a barren tree in a too strong wind.

"Listen to me Marissa," Stefan said. "I can help you get out of here. It's nearly night, we can take you back through the tunnels and get you some place safe-"

Marissa shook her head, harder than before, frantic, unhinged. "He never stopped, ever since I first came here, he let them bite me, and _drink from me!"_ Her words were 5 years-worth of pain flooded into one moment. Tears fell hard from her eyes, showering her face in wet, streaked ribbons. _"Please, no more- I don't want to be here anymore, please make it stop, I-_" Her sobs became visceral, tearing, she clutched the bear like it was the only thing left that cared about her. "I want my mom-"

Sam didn't know if years locked in this place had shredded whatever was left of her mind; or if she had blocked out the memories of her parents being mauled by vampires in order to survive. He set a hand on her shoulder, she jerked like he had shocked her. "Marissa-"

"_I want my mom!" _Marissa's cry moved around the room, a sound that did not echo, was just sad, gone.

Sam felt her scream like a physical wound. He stood up slowly and walked past Stefan and over to the overturned bedframe. He kicked it in, a chunk of wood broke partway off; he pulled at it until had a piece as big as his arm with a jagged tip.

"What the hell are you doing?" Stefan stood back up, eying the wood, he grabbed Sam's wrist. "We can _save _her!-"

Sam couldn't see his own expression, whether it was pleading or terrifying; but everything that he couldn't say to Stefan Salvatore was pushed out through that look. Stefan released his arm.

Sam knelt down next to Marissa again; he kept the piece of wood low, out of eyesight.

But Marissa tracked it anyway. "What are you going to do?"

"I need your help again-" Sam drew his eyes up to hers. "But I _promise_ this time, I'll help you too, okay?"

Marissa nodded, "Okay-" she clutched to the rag of a polar bear, fingers tight in its fur. "Is-" she sniffed. "Will it hurt?" Her eyes were a watered, translucent green, like someone who hadn't been let out into the sun in a very long time.

Sam couldn't breathe for a long moment. "Close your eyes," he raised his free hand, ghosting his fingers over her scared face until she did. "I want you to think about your mom-" Sam raised his hand that grasped the jagged piece of wood up, "Tell me when you can see her."

Marissa's breath trembled, her body shook from it. "I don't see her!-"

"You will." Sam raised the stake, aiming where he had to. "Just keep thinking about her, okay?"

Marissa nodded again, holding her eyes tightly closed. Her breaths came uneven and jagged, and her grip on her bear became tighter.

A look of surprise and happy longing flew across her face moments later. "I can see her!-"

Sam plunged the jagged end of the bedpost into Marissa's chest.

Her eyes flew open in shocked pain, and her body shuddered on a choking gasp. Her skin began to turn a dark sickening gray, veins protruding into thick black masses under her skin. She gasped again, a dying choking sound.

"_I'm sorry,"_ Sam watched as her eyes became translucent and unseeing, thick tears trailed down the grayness of her skin. He caught her limp body and lowered her to the floor. Her head listed to the side, her body looked so small in the blood stained white dress.

Sam reached down and pulled the stake out of her chest with a grunt, holding to the bloody thing.

A tickle brushed by his legs and he jumped, looking down at the orange tabby cat. It sniffed at Marissa's face, mewling, then climbed onto her chest and laid its head down on her skin, it's mewl turned into a jagged sort of warble.

Sam threw the bloody stake hard against the stone, the wood splintered apart with a thick sound. He swallowed breath after breath that came too fast, pulling at his hair, wanting to pull his skin off. He fumbling inside the pocket of his jacket. His phone showed a single bar, before it vanished, he connected his call.

"-_Sammy? Sam! Talk to me damnit, are you okay?"_

"I killed her Dean."

"_What the hell are you talking about? Killed who?- Sam!"_

"I did this to her-" Sam felt his voice unraveling, "I turned her into a vampire-"

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Dust billowed like smoke the moment the wall started to cave in. Dean had barely been able to see, the world was nothing but shadows and noise. He had watched Sam fall inches away from the stones that were bigger than his torso, moments away from crashing into him. Then one _had _crash into him, dropped him to the ground in a stain of blood. Dean had screamed his brother's name. He saw Stefan grab his brother and pull him backwards over the falling rubble. His second instinct to save those he could immediately reach had him grabbing Elena earlier and jerking her out of the line of fire of falling stone, and there was no time to reach Sam before the wall exploded into dust that swallowed both Stefan and Sam.

Dean had been forced backwards as the rock and dust tumbled down around them. A flat piece of stone the size of his chest hadsplit from above and dropped down hard. Dean's vision was still nothing but broken, but he felt the_ 'whoosh' _of air the moment Elena rushed into him and rolled him out of the way, throwing them both to the ground. All Dean's hunter instincts that screamed that Elena was a vampire, and numerously stronger than him were blocked out by the earth shattering sound of rocks that began to fall as a result of collapse of the giant stone. Dean had rolled so that Elena was underneath his arm, shielding her head with his shoulder.

Elena's smaller body had been pressed under his larger frame as stone and pebbles pelted them from above. The stone above that made up the ceiling had rumbled and shook horribly; there had been no time to run from the impending collapse, and Dean had been able to do nothing but brace for impact.

The entire collapse of the wall had only taken 20 seconds, but it was 20 seconds of rapidly falling jagged stones that cut and slammed into Dean's face and dust that rendered his breath into choking gasps.A slice of stone had torn into his knuckles, ripping the flesh off of it then the cacophony of noise finally ended.

Dean raised his head into a choking of thick dust. The hallway wasalmost pitch black, lit in a diagonal from his flashlight half buried underneath a wall of stone. He was able to discern this because his vision had sharpened, the red lingering haze from before had cleared, but it had been replaced by anther haze, one that vampire blood couldn't cure.

Underneath his arm, Elena coughed, her dark hair covered in dust making her look like she had gone prematurely gray. She wiggled out of his grasp and Dean released her, coughing into the dust ridden air.

Dean climbed to his feet, the blood from his knuckles staining his jeans. He rubbed the grit out of his eyes, taking a second to realize that the cloudy haze in front of him was at least _visible _to him now, except that didn't make him feel better when he got a look at what the dust was hiding.

"_Oh God-" _Elena's words were choked into the dust.

The wall had been reduced to nothing but a gigantic mass of stone, piled precariously on top of each other.

"Sam!-" Dean dug away where the beam of light was buried in the stone, pulling out his battered flashlight.

"Stefan!" Elena was at the haphazard wall of stone, hands moving along it, like she was looking for an access lever.

"_Sam!"_ Dean shone his flashlight beam all along the stone, looking for signs of Sam, afraid of finding him buried underneath the rock.

"_Stefan, can you hear me?"_ Elena pressed her mouth close to the rock and shouted this.

"_Sammy!"_ Dean saw no trace of his brother, no nothing, he had simply vanished behind the avalanche. He buried the end of his flashlight into a pile of stone so that it angled towards the rocks. He started to dig at the stone with his bare hands, the split, torn skin of his knuckles bleeding a trail of blood that glowed almost florescent in the beam of his flashlight. "Damnit, man, come on!"

Elena saw what he was doing, and began to pull at the rocks to the right of where he was. A sliding of rock made them both jump back before it could bury their feet in jagged stone. But as much stone as fell to the ground, more immediately caved in to take its place.

Dean grabbed Elena's wrist just as she was about to pull another stone from the pile.

"They're in there Dean!" Elean's face was bathed in sweat, hairline a matting of blood from fallen rocks. "We have to do something!"

Dean stared at the wall that had buried his brother behind it. "We have to find another way in, if we keep trying to break through here it's going to collapse on us-" He swore, kicking at the pile of rubble at his feet. He swiped a hand down his blood streaked forehead, and the vampire with him only watched, making no move to attack him, her eyes just as desperate as his, her face just as bloody.

A noise from the depths of his dust covered jacket startled him. They had to have been down over 100 feet underground, out of range for any cellphone signal, but the sound of a ringing phone was unmistakable.

Dean fumbled with bloody fingers into his jacket for his phone that still lit up despite a cracked screen. He didn't bother looking at the caller ID, he just answered before the signal was lost.

"Sammy? Talk to me damnit, are you okay?"

"_I killed her Dean,"_

Dean was still processing that Sam was _alive_, so his brain had to do almost a complete reverse when he heard what Sam said. _"What are you talking about? Killed who?"_

Sam didn't answer for a second, then two, the silence slammed at Dean like the rocks had. "Sam!"

"_I did this to her, I turned her into a vampire-"_

Something hard slammed into Dean that wasn't a rock.

"_She didn't have to die, Dean-she was a kid-"_ Sam's voice sounded off, not just 'in shock off'. Whenever Sam had been afraid as a kid, he would babble, repeating Dean's name over and over every time he said something. That was something that never left when he grew up; this is what Dean heard now.

"You did what you had to do Sammy, okay?" Dean had no idea who Sam was talking about, but he could hear his brother's voice, whatever had happened, he was beginning to lose it, and he couldn't' let that happen. "This isn't your fault-"

There was a fractured sounding laugh for a second over the line. "_I brought her here- How is _any _of this not my fault?"_

"Because it _isn't!_" Dean said around the motes of choking dust dancing in the air. "Listen to me, these rocks are unstable Sam, you and Stefan need to get the hell out of there-"

"_You're wrong Dean-"_

"Damnit Sam, no I'm not!" Again, Dean had no exact idea of what had happened to Sam, but it didn't matter, he had to reach his brother. "Look whatever this is, we'll figure it out, but you're getting over your martyr issues right now because I'm _not letting you die_, you understand me?"

There was a heavy sound, like Sam had just punched or thrown something through stone, and Dean felt the punch like it had happened to him. He waited, hoping that whatever connection he still had with Sam would find its way out of the anger and resentment that Sam had towards him.

"_We're in some sort of cell,"_ Sam's voice finally came back over the line, still broken, but trying to sound stronger. "_There's a small window here, but it's really thin- But there's a cat in here. _ Sam's voice stalled out and Dean heard what he couldn't say. "_-it wouldn't be able to fit through there or operate that sliding wall-"_

"Which means it got in another way," Dean returned, his heart rate started to slow down just a bit, but then it picked up again because Sam still sounded the way that he did. "Is there a door?-"

"_There's light from the window, but it looks artificial, I think it leads to another corridor-" _ there was a sound like Sam was standing on top of a box spring. "_There's a door behind the bed,"_ he heard his brother straining to open it, heard the noises he made, as he tried again and again. Finally a horrendous squeaking sound came like the door Sam had talked about had finally given way.

"_It's a hallway-" _

"Alright, go!" Dean returned.

"_Dean,"_

"I know Sammy, alright," Dean kept his voice level for the sake of his brother, but he heard what Sam couldn't say. Go-"

It was after that last "go" that Dean lost the signal to his call.

"Are they okay?"

Elena asked a question that she even seemed stunned that she had asked. Were _any _of them okay?

"Right now, being alive counts as okay," Dean shined his light down the long hallway they had yet to traverse, it extended down a visual length of 50 feet, then broke off into what was most likely a turn, or possibly another cave in.

"Come on," Dean started to walk ahead, fingers going inside his jacket, pulling out a curved blade half the length of his arm, brandishing it in front of him.

Despite the tenseness of the situation Elena shot him half a cockeyed look at the blade. "Where are you _keeping _those?"

"Trust me, you don't want to know," Dean brandished the knife and crept at a pace that kept as little weight off his shoes as possible.

Elena followed him. The heels of her shoes barely made a sound on the floor; but it was like she thought that the noise was sound enough, because she stopped to break off the heels of her boots discarding them away like rejected skimming stones.

The light overhead began to evaporate from the shadow that had clung to it and grew brighter, like the sun had seeped in through windows, but the walls remained solid and windowless and the hum of florescent lighting bulbs came in over their heads. They seemed brighter than the regular florescent bulbs, and a word hung on the end of Dean's tongue from the time he had worked on Buddy's farm. _Grow Bulbs. _Light bulbs farmers used in hydroponic greenhouses as artificial sunlight for the plants. And Dean had a pretty good guess why they would be used in a place that stockpiled and generated vampires.

"Make sure you keep your sun retardant jewelry on," Dean flashed his light up to the long florescent tubes that hung over their heads, without more explanation than that.

Elena glanced up and understood without questioning it.

For three minutes the only sounds that Dean heard were his own breathing and Elena's quiet, but somewhat off footsteps in her broken shoes. They rounded the hallway and took it a sharp left to an even _longer _hallway lined in empty cells, the smell of fresh blood hanging cloyingly in the air. It was puddled around the base of a cell to the left, but what caught Dean's eye more than the blood was something shining from inside the puddle. He knelt down and pulled out a .45 caliber bullet, sticky with blood burned around the edges so that the inside of the shell was exposed like a miniature cup.

Elena reached out to take the bullet from him, maybe to examine it, but Dean didn't have time to ask before a hiss came like water on a hot skillet and Elena drew back with a sharp cry.

The tips of her fingers were blistered and red. "The bullet's full of vervain-"

Dean gazed at her in confusion. "The sacrificial herb?" His only knowledge of Vervain was of Pagan Gods and Bad Santa.

"It's poison to vampires in high enough doses," Elena tore her gaze away from the blood puddled floor to the empty cells like she was trying to wish a thought away. "Damon-" she whipped back to face Dean.

And in that moment Dean realized his vision was completely healed because he could see the frantic, terrified look on her face.

"He was here, they hurt him," she climbed to her fee. "We have to find him, we can't let them hurt him again!-God what if he's-"

"Listen to me, hey!" Dean grabbed her wrist, "I promised you I'd help you find him, and I'm not turning around until I meet that promise."

"_Wanna bet on that?"_

The voice cut through the air as sharp as a razor blade. Four cells down on the right hand side of the hallway a figure stood, watching them like prey, then advancing slowly.

"Dean Winchester." The man who spoke aas tall, brown hair cropped down to his skull, in a pair of jeans and a gray hoodie that looked like they hadn't seen a washing machine since they'd been created.

Dean stared down face he had last seen fly off of its neck into a tree in the landscape of Purgatory. He still heard the thuds of vampire heads hitting the ground in his dreams. "What the hell?"

"You're aiming too high," the vampire returned in that lazy self-righteous way that made Dean hate the species before he could drive a car legally. "Think lower-"

"I know when our last meet up was, I'm the one who made your head roll remember?" Dean drew his blade out. "So how is it that you're here?"

"Purgatory isn't the Alcatraz it used to be when you were there," The vamp watched Dean with a menacing glare. "With things as screwed up as they are in the cosmic alignment I got to get a Get Out of Jail Free pass, didn't even need to hitch a ride to do it like your skeazy pal Benny."

Dean's nostrils flared at the mention of Benny. "So what do you want? Or do you intend to talk us to death before you get to the point?"

The vamp laughed dryly. "What I _want_ is the same thing as you Dean."

"Not unless you enjoy fatalism." Dean moved forward with the blade, not using it, not even to cut the air, but having it out and present.

"I enjoy _order _Mr. Winchester," the vamp stared at Dean with hard eyes, like Dean was a thing on the road to be either picked up or ran over. The dark eyes moved over to Elena, and the gaze shifted like he was staring at a piece of dog shit on that same road. "Obviously if you're keeping company with these abominations, this then you don't."

'_I'm _an abomination?" Elena's voice was low an angry beside Dean's, like she had been called filthy one damn time too many. "You _torture _your own kind in here, what does that make you?"

The Vamp blew her off like she had insulted him. "You are not my kind, girl, you are a stunted maggot of evolution. That's why we have to eradicate you. We could've simply stolen all your precious daylight rings and let you burn, but somehow having you all _eat _yourself to death is more poetic."

"_Where's Damon?" _Elena yelled.

"Damon who?" The Vamp returned, sarcastic, but like he also never bothered to learn the name of any prisoners kept there. But he then had an 'aha' moment face. "210151 you mean? If you wanted to throw yourself on the blade baby, all you had to do was ask."

Dean felt a rush of wind as Elena hurled herself at the vampire at a speed that was nothing but a blur to him. She was on him in a moment, but he deflected her attack, flipping her on her back with a thud that sounded like she'd broken several vertebra.

Dean drove the knife into the hilt in the Vamp's back. He released Elena, but didn't drop, turning around with the blade sticking out of his hoodie like a nettle. The crackling of his teeth hissed in Dean's ears and Dean was thrown hard against the reinforced steel bars of an abandoned cell; his head smacked hard into them, the world turned bright red. Dean had no idea when the next crack to the head would kill him; but he'd been dead more times that he could remember, and he wasn't about to add this one to the list. He moved in a lightning quick moment and jerked his knife out of the Vamp's back and stuck it deep in his neck.

The Vamp cried out with a growl that was more pissed than painful. He pulled the knife out of his neck and blood sprayed out like a fountain. "After I kill these worthless things," he breathed out in a raspy reedy, sounding voice, air leaking out of his damaged trachea. "The next species that I'm ending, is _Hunter!" _ He reared back with his fangs and grabbed Dean by the collar, throwing off his slash with the knife.

Dean raised the knife again, only to have it sent clattering to the stone ground. He reached out and pushed against the rearing bucking fangs, feeling hot spit and venom slid warm down his neck.

Another blur of movement came, and Elena was sinking her fangs into the Vamp's neck with a strangled scream, biting hard into the already bleeding wound, jerking her head hard like she was tearing into a piece of meat. The Vamp's scream of outrage turned into agony in the two seconds he was allowed to make a sound before his head came detached from his neck and tumbled to the floor, his body dropping next to it.

Elena stood in the remains of her carnage, blood staining her chin and neck like a gruesome mask, her fangs were still out and her eyes were heavy, and wide like she couldn't comprehend what she had just been capable of doing. She stepped over the body and reached out a hand to Dean.

Her hand was small in his grasp, but the force she pulled him up with wasn't as small. "Damon came this way, I know it-" Her panting slowly died down, she wiped at the blood on her face like she was a girl trying to wipe juice off her mouth before it stained.

"Then let's go," Dean didn't add any comment to what he had just witnessed. The line between 'the monster' and 'the hunter' had blurred somewhere between the Vamps fang's and Elena saving his life with her own.

He and Elena took off in a run down the hallway, the smell of blood following closely behind them.


	11. Chapter 11

**CHAPTER ELEVEN**

"_Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart _

_and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up."  
_

~ Neil Gaiman, The Sandman, Vol. 9: The Kindly Ones

**xxxxXxxxx**

"Do you see them anywhere?" Jeremy asked over the wheel as he drove the huge muscle car through a long crowded street that so closely resembled Mystic Falls that he had to remind himself that it _wasn't._

Bonnie leaned over the leather dash to peer at the crowds that were giving her the side eye for riding in a car at all. Apparently, the entire populous of the town seemed to consider the roads more of a sidewalk than an actual _road_. She roamed her eyes over the fast moving crowds, looking for a flash of Caroline's bright blonde hair, but saw nothing.

"No," she said to Jeremey. "I've tried calling Caroline three times, but it goes straight to voicemail-It doesn't make any sense! They should've beaten us here."

"What about Elena and Stefan?" Jeremey asked.

"I couldn't even get through to voicemail on either of them." Bonnie said this as the apology that it was as she watched Jeremey's face fall into worry. "They're together Jer, I'm sure they're okay-"

"They're together with _hunters _Bonnie," Jeremy turned to her, "None of this is okay."

Bonnie set her hand on his arm, and tried to look reassuring, but the look Jeremy gave her silenced her into the reality that she truly felt.

She glanced out over the crowd again, looking for Caroline, or Matt, or even Stefan and Elena, when she saw it. She leaned over, the well-worn cracked leather seat shifting audibly with her.

"What is it?" Jeremey turned to her.

The sun had already gone down and streetlamps illuminated the blue hazed night sky. The road they drove on curved to the right into a crowd of people at restaurant with sidewalk outdoor seating that spilled into the street like everything else. The crowd was thick outside and the pumping of loud music came though even with the windows of the car rolled up.

Bonnie peered into the group, harder like she couldn't believe what she saw. A woman stood there, waving the car down as she saw them approach "Is that _Katherine?"_

Jeremy and Bonnie both watched as Katherine Pierce separated herself from the crowd and jogged over to the Impala, so close to it that Jeremy almost ran her over. He pulled the car to the side of the road next to someone's steel blue pickup truck.

Katherine ripped open the door before the car even stopped. "Why the hell are you parking?!"

"What the hell are you doing here?" Even in the dark Bonnie saw the torn and bloodied state of Katherine's clothes. "Where's Stefan and Elena?"

"I don't know-" Katherine returned.

"What do you mean you don't know?!" Jeremy demanded.

"_Bonnie!"_ Caroline's bright blonde hair finally emerged through the darkness, Matt close behind her. "Thank god!" Caroline's voice was full of relief. "I kept trying to reach you, but there was no signal-" her relief soon melted into hostility like ice on a summer sidewalk when she spotted Katherine. "What the hell are you doing here?! Where are Stefan and Elena?"

"She says she doesn't know," Jeremy answered for Katherine air quoted the last two words.

"What the hell do you mean you don't know?!" Matt cut in, repeating what Jeremy said seconds before. "You were with them!"

"And clearly I'm _not _anymore!" Kathrine snapped. "We got ambushed in the woods by other vampires, and I got separated-"

"_Other _vampires?" Caroline "Wait, what other vampires?

"As in blood thirsty psychopaths that tried to kill Stefan and Elena, and _me!_ But nice job jumping to the less important fact Caroline."

"How do we know you're not lying about this?" Caroline snapped.

"Because I'm not a vampire anymore," Katherine retorted. "I don't bloody up my good clothes for something to do, and because it's the _truth_, whether you believe it or not-"

"You ran to _save _yourself Katherine," Matt returned. "Don't pretend it was for any other reason than your own skin-"

"I did it to make sure that psycho group of vampires didn't capture _all _of us like they wanted Matt," Katherine retorted. "My own skin may have been in the equation, but so was everyone else's."

"If you don't know where they are then how did you get here?" Bonnie asked.

"Just because I'm human now Bon Bon doesn't mean I've forgotten my 500 year past life." Katherine shot back. "I may not know _exactly _where they are, but Giuseppe Salvatore took me riding to Parkesburg on several occasions to visit the abandoned home of some widowed tobacco heiress who died up north from distemper or something; Stefan and Damon used to join us." Katherine seemed to not register, but more importantly not _acknowledge _the look of disgust from the crowd was with. "That plantation's only three miles from here, that's not a coincidence."

"Then we need to go!" Caroline had to shush her voice when a passing woman glared at her in reproach. Her words were like a catalyst to Jeremey and he opened the front door of the Impala.

Katherine immediately slammed the door on him, close to severing off his hand. "You don't _drive_ there, Jeremy," She said it like he was a kindergartener on the slower end of the comprehension scale. "This is an Underground Railroad Stop, the entire town's zigzagged with underground tunnels, first one starts over at the livery." As she talked, she walked around to the trunk, reaching down into her tattered shirt to her bra, and what was underneath.

"What are you doing?" Jeremy cut in, watching as Katherine unearthed a bobby pin from in between her breasts with a filed end as sharp as a dart tip.

"You can enjoy it later Little Gilbert," Katherine manipulated the sharp end of the bobby pin into the lock, working and twisting until the trunk popped open with a snap. The interior was littered with old candy wrappers, empty beer bottles and an army surplus bag that regurgitated clothes out of its half unzipped state. Katherine shoved all of this aside until she got to the floor of the trunk and began to work the bobby pin into a rounded groove.

"Enough with the _stupid _one liners Katherine!" Caroline snapped. "I don't know what you're trying to do by stalling but _we_ need to find Stefan and Elena!-"

"That's what I'm trying to do Caroline!" Katherine barked.

"No,_ you're _wasting time!" Caroline barked back, her hostile voice turned a young couple around.

"Is everything okay?" The man had a navy blue Baby Bjorn strapped to him, the bald head of a baby peaked out from above it.

"Yeah, we're fine," Jeremy said quickly, trying to drown out the sounds of Katherine's lock picking.

The man wasn't convinced and stared down at Katherine spilling out the contents of the trunk onto the ground. "What is she doing?"

"She lost a hairpin in the trunk," Matt lied a half ass kind of lie that got him the full-on death glare from Katherine as she hoisted a leg into the trunk and started tugging upwards with both hands.

The man's face turned to disbelief at what he was witnessing Katherine doing, also seeming to notice the blood on her clothes for the first time. "Is this even your _car?"_

"We've been traveling cross-country, lost the key somewhere in Spokane." Bonnie tried to wave off Katherine's less than not noticeable movements in the trunk.

"I'm calling the cops!" the man's wife spoke up beside him and whipped out a cellphone.

Caroline quickly snatched it from her.

"What the hell are you doing?" the woman snapped.

"You're not calling the cops," Caroline's pupils dilated around hazel eyes; she didn't blink as she stared right into the woman's green eyes, then did the same to the man, trying to hold both of them in her line of sight. "You're going to go straight home and forget everything you just saw, it's late-"

"It's late," the man repeated, his voice slow and syrupy.

"Your baby is tired," Caroline said "You need to put him to bed."

The baby started to cry like it was a stage cue, reaching a high pitch in a matter of seconds.

"The baby is tired honey," The woman turned to her husband slowly like all of her movements were being controlled with puppet strings. "We need to put him to bed."

The man looked down at the baby and nodded. He placed a hand on his wife's back and the two of them started back down the sidewalk like they never had most recent encounter at all.

"Not a half bad compulsion Forbes," Katherine retorted in a back handed compliment. "Not good, but not totally sucking either."

Caroline whipped her head back to Katherine, eyes fuming as she watched her continue to yank on the car. "Seriously? _Enough_ with the lame cat burglar attempts; okay? We have to go!- there's _nothing _there!-"

Katherine gave one last hard tug and a mechanism popped open and the floor of the trunk raised up. Katherine tucked the bobby pin back into the deep curved crevice of her breasts and held the door open. "You were saying?"

Caroline's eyes widened in shock, as she, Bonnie, Matt, and Jeremey stared down through the false bottom of the trunk.

Matt bent his head down closer. "What the hell?"

The space carpeted with weapons: hunting rifles, sheathed knives in numerous lengths, cigar boxes rattling with heavy shot gun shells that leached a smell of dry salt, grenades hanging from the false bottom's hatch. Along with these weapons were things that seemed not to make sense: leather pouches that held handfuls of dirt, a wooden long neck flask, a dream catcher, hanging next to the grenade, a pile of dark ash in a jar.

"How the hell did you know that they would keep an arsenal in the trunk?" Jeremy watched as Katherine shoved the jar of ash aside and pulled out a wicked looking serrated knife as long as her arm from its sheath.

"Because I didn't get to be 535-years-old by stupidly underestimating my enemies Jeremy." Katherine shoved a single barreled sawed off shotgun at him, barrel first. "Consider it a practice you might want to indoctrinate into your daily routine if you want to keep that Gilbert body out of the Other Side." She walked across the street, tucking the blade down the leg of her jeans as she went like it was a perfectly normal thing to do.

Jeremy closed the trunk of the car and locked the doors because it was their only way out of Parkesburg, and he needed to keep it that way, he just hoped no one noticed the hole in the window. He jogged into the street to keep up with Katherine, Matt, Bonnie, and Caroline quickly following. Non-Vampire or not, one of them were about to let Katherine Pierce wander off armed with a wicked looked blade alone.

The street Katherine followed curved down into a line of outdoor cafes and restaurants. Dogwood blooms spilled in pots out from the trellises of one café with a black overhanging sign proclaiming its name above it. People were packed inside, the tables and the smell of baked breads and cheese laden pastas mixed with the smells of the flowers. After a distance of 50 feet or so the restaurants dissolved into shops with brightly light windows laden with tourist trinkets.

Katherine stared down at the storefronts like she was apprising a piece of jewelry, and she found the sight of it all wanting. "God, they sure whored this place out for the tourists-"

"Aren't you supposed to care about Stefan or something?" Caroline snapped just as they passed an Apple Store made of pure white. "Wouldn't that mean that you _didn _ leave him to fend off rabid vampires in the condition that he's in!-"

"Green isn't your best shade Caroline," Katherine retorted casually like they were walking down the street just taking in the air.

"Knock it off Katherine!" Bonnie demanded, eyes glowering at her.

"You're a vapored ghost Bonnie, remember?" Katherine snapped began walking again, throwing the remark over her shoulder like Bonnie wasn't worthy of face-to-face contact. "You don't witchy have powers to order me around anymore-"

"You're not a vampire anymore," Bonnie snapped back. "I don't need witchy powers, all I have to do is kick your ass and you stay down for a long time, so answer her question."

Katherine slowed down, and turned around at an intersection, the broken heals she wore clacked against the pavement. Cars moved fast down a two lane road in the center of town. "Bonnie Bennett, so sassy-" Her dark eyes colored in amusement.

Bonnie stared down Katherine in a dead stone glare.

Katherine rolled her eyes. "None of you may want to accept it, but I've known Stefan longer than _any one _of you have- Damon too for that matter. Did you think I would just let myself get ripped to pieces by mutated vampires just to claim a loyalty oath rather than _actually _ do something practical to help Stefan get his brother out?"

None of the faces watching Katherine fully believed what she said to be hard truth, but what she said didn't pass over them without impact, so none of them were able to speak on either account.

Kathrine rolled her eyes again, and started across the road, cars honking at her because she didn't wait for the cross walk signal.

"Okay, _that's _a load of _crap!_" Caroline said the minute Katherine disappeared. "She's _clearly _lying! Shedoesn't care about Stefan! She used that attack she talked about as a distraction to get her deserter ass away!-"

"Maybe not-"

Caroline whirled on Matt and what he said. "_Seriously Matt? _You _believe_ her-?!_"_

"She has no reason to lie-"

"She has _every _reason to lie!" Caroline hissed back. "She's _Katherine Pierce, _she lies like it's her job!"

"I'm not saying that Katherine's turned a new leaf Care," Matt insisted. "But she's _right. _She's known Stefan and Damon longer than any of us have."

"She manipulated them Matt!" Bonnie cut in. "She's the reason they're vampires in the first place!-"

"It still doesn't make the first part not true," Matt insisted. "Whatever the reason that she wants to find them, _she wants to find them_." Matt Donovan was the human in the town full of monster friendships, the boy that everyone loved, the ordinary one, the one who they all used to be before the supernatural life turned them out into who they were now. Which made what he said resonate like a struck bell. "And I for one want to be there when she does-" Matt moved away from his friends and jogged across the street, waving off the cars who honked at him.

Matt moved past the crowd of people leisurely walking along the sidewalk, brushing past a young mother with her child with a hand on her back and an '_I'm sorry'_ after he bumped her, eyes tracking Katherine's long dark hair moving through the crowd. The road he was on hugged a sidewalk where the buildings were more spaced out, tall oak trees intermingled in the empty spaces. Just past two such oak trees Matt watched Katherine disappear into a bricked open faced bricked building surrounded by a wooden fence. He'd been to his uncle's farm enough times in Lancaster to recognize a horse coral when he saw it. The front of the horse coral was made of packed dirt and it was empty. The soft whinny of sleeping horses echoing from behind darkened spaces of stable doors. Across from the stables the fence opened partway at an access point where there was another open area of dirt. It seemed to serve as a parking lot because of the old Ford pickup truck and the one white Lincoln that was parked sideways in the middle of it.

Matt stepped down the walkway that led up to the building. He opened his mouth to call out Katherine's name but before he could a scream cut across the night, making the hair on the back of his neck stand up. He regretted not taking one of the weapons from the Impala trunk as he balled his hands into fists and ran to the left where the noise seemed to be coming from the front of the white car.

When he drew closer to the front of the Lincoln he saw a line of dark blood running up the right side. The windshield was completely smashed, leaving nothing but the metal framework – and a woman was spread eagle across the hole, hands and feet punched _into _the metal.

And leaning over her was Katherine, the blade she had stolen pressed up against the woman's neck; the woman's face was covered in blood and she was in ragged sounding heaved breaths.

"Katherine what the hell are you doing?!" Matt yanked Katherine's arm back.

"Back of Mattie," Katherine snarled and yanked her arm out of Matt's grip. "I got this!"

Matt grabbed her arm again, intending to help the woman, however he could. But as he took a step towards her, a series of spiked teeth descended over her normal set, and she snarled at him.

"You heard her _Mattie_- Back. Off." the woman, the _thing_ shouted.

Katherine brought the blade back down and up _into_ her neck, trickles of blood falling down her skin. "I didn't give you permission to talk to him honey, now did I?"

The woman panted, and turned hate filled eyes to her. "You and your friends are nothing but _putrid _garbage!-"

Katherine pressed the blade in harder, drawing a line of blood across the woman's neck as thick as a scarf. "Well aren't you a mean little thing?" she traced the blade around in long strokes. "How about you stop name calling and elaborate a little more?"

The woman growled in pain.

Katherine leaned over in her broken heels and stared down at her. "Let me guess: 5'11", ripped, luscious hair?" She glanced up at the woman's body spread eagle on the car. "Don't feel bad, it's hard to resist _not_ lying down for those hazel bedroom eyes of his-"

The vampire growled, hostile.

Katherine shoved the blade in deeper still, ripping the cuts on the woman's neck like rivers, silencing her growl into a gasped choking sound. "Tell me where he went and I'll kill you faster than I want to."

"_You won't be killing anyone."_

The voice turned Matt and Katherine around.

The couple from the street stood there, bodies cloaked in the semi darkness from the night and the lanterns overhead in the stables overhanging roof. The man still had the Baby Bjorn strapped around his body. He removed it and dropped it to the ground in a heap, a plastic baby doll tumbling out onto the ground, crying the same high pitched cry from earlier.

The woman smiled, like Matt and Katherine were two children that had snuck out late at night to watch an R rated movie. She stared up at the vampire pinned to the car like she was the friend who had told them to sneak out. "We'll deal with you in a second, Cara," her eyes were hostile before they roamed back over to Katherine, the hostility reaching dangerous intensity.

"It was rude of you to run away, Ms. Katherine," The man said. "Darius doesn't appreciate rudeness."

"Well I don't appreciate Darius, so let's just call it even all around." Katherine snapped back.

The man smiled. "You are _feisty,_ girl-" He eyed Katherine like she was exposed completely before him. "I'm willing to give you a fair shot." He knelt down underneath the fallen baby doll, and pulled a black handgun. He aimed the gun at her. "Regular bullets, tipped with a little Vervain from Darius stock. Enough to incapacitate vampires like you, until we bring you to him." He cocked the gun. "Let's see who's _really_ the faster vampire species."

Matt glanced at the gun, then at Katherine holding the blade, watching her eyes do the same to the gun. "Why don't you both go to hell?"

The woman turned to Matt. "Katherine Pierce has a _Champion-"_' amusement crossed her face. "How quaint." A noise emerged from her smile, and a set of razor sharp teeth covered her original teeth.

There came a thudded, slicing sound, and both vampires and Matt turned to see the head of Cara drop off of her neck, blood pouring out of the stump.

Katherine stared down the woman, blood on her face, leaking down her the blade to her hand. "I don't do quaint."

The man raised the gun, aiming. Matt reached and jerked his hand, making his aim go high, catching Katherine in the shoulder. She dropped to the ground with a grunt.

The male vampire flung Matt to the ground, snapping a mouthful of fangs at him, he squirmed and moved trying to dodge the attack, a sticky foul liquid pooling down his neck. The vampire's roar died in his mouth and his head went one way, his body tumbling the opposite way.

Katherine stood over Matt, the machete stained higher in blood, clutching at the bullet hole in her shoulder. "Sorry, Mattie Blue-Blue is sort of off limits." Katherine made a painful grunted noise, dropping the blade and grabbed at her shoulder harder.

The female vampire came up behind her and grabbed at the same shoulder and Katherine screamed.

A shot gun blast tore a huge, jagged hole through the woman's chest, right through to the other side. She stumbled back, but instead of falling, she roared in indignation.

A hand grabbed the woman back, Caroline torqued her hands behind her back, and tore into her neck hard, flung backwards, with the other vampire's body on top of hers. Caroline reached her hand into the woman's shredded cavity, and she roared, then jerked in a stop as Caroline ripped her heart up and out of the hole.

Caroline laid there in shock, letting the heart fall out of her fingers to the ground.

"Caroline! Hey!" Jeremy ran over to her and rolled the dead vampire body off of her, pulling her to her feet. "Are you okay?"

Caroline looked shaky, but nodded, her breathing hard on adrenaline, blood both stained and ran down her hands.

Bonnie yanked Matt up off the ground. "Are you guys okay?" starring at the headless vampire at her feet, then at Katherine standing there with a blade and a bloody shoulder.

Matt stared at Katherine too until he was able to find his voice. "Where did they go? Did she tell you?"

Katherine stared at him like he already should know the answer. "It's here somewhere, at least it used to be-" Her voice wasn't at all snarky, instead it was full of a real uncertainty.

Jeremey glanced behind him, looking up and down the walls until he saw something. "What is that?" He pointed back behind him, cutting off Katherine's words.

Behind them was a double set of doors opening to the livery itself. The floor was lined with a layer of hay. There was one section where it was flung up and askew like there was something heavier underneath it.

Jeremy ran over, Bonnie turned and followed him. She found him pulling aside the hay, to reveal a trap door caved partway into a hole of equal size, a metal lock was half shot off, and the hinges on the other side were nearly torn off.

Someone had wedged a piece of wood into the door, but it was broken halfway, like the weight of the door had snapped it apart.

Katherine grabbed at the brass ring and pulled up, but was only able to make the door rise two inches before she dropped it back down with a groan.

"Caroline-!" Jeremy called over as Caroline moved over to door handle that Katherine. "Grab that end!" He knelt down and grabbed one end of the door, watching as Caroline grabbed the other. "Pull!-"

Katherine fell back, looking at the heavy door like it was a personal insult.

Caroline pulled up and hard at the same moment Jeremey did, even with Vampire strength and Hunter strength they were both straining, the door not moving at all. They yanked harder, Caroline felt her muscles liquefy, Jeremy grunted a scream, and the door finally flipped back.

Staring up at them was a hole of darkness.

Bonnie stared into the yawning darkness. "Where does this even go?"

"Only one way to find out-" Jeremey jumped down into the hole, falling for a good 10 feet before his feet hit packed earth.

Caroline dropped in next, landing right beside him. She turned and shouted: "Come on!" back up the hole:

Bonnie lowered into a crouch and jumped, Jeremy reached out to grab her arms to buffer her fall.

In a moment that didn't allow for thinking Matt grabbed a hold of Katherine around the waist and jumped with her in the hole.

Katherine swore loudly in his ear as they both fell, beating him across the chest with her good arm as soon as they hit the ground.

"Relax!" Matt let go of her after she nearly took out his eyes with a double elbow block.

Katherine shot him a murderous glare. "You will _never _do that again!"

"You're welcome." Matt tore off a piece of his shirt sleeve and wrapped it around her shoulder, Katherine eyeing him in the half darkness, still glowering, but lessoning with each wrap of the dirty blue cloth.

They were standing in a darkened hallway that went on endlessly in stone and high beams, the smell of blood hung heavily in the air.

Caroline traced her hand along the stone, feeling it damp in places with moss and water, though she had no idea where the water _came _from. "Okay, _what_ is this place?"

"It's an Underground Railroad Tunnel." Katherine grunted out under the pain of the wound in her shoulder, but moved forward, pushing past all of them like she was taking in something that she had seen before, but only heard about. "I heard rumors that Lady Rosenbaum was an Abolitionist, supposedly she begged the local Quakers to create a tunnel to her home for runaway slaves- Apparently they're _true."_

"So this should lead _all_ the way back to the Plantation house?" Jeremey asked.

"A + Little Gilbert," Katherine returned in slight amusement.

"But I don't get it," Jeremy returned. "The Plantation House is open for tourists every season, you couldn't hide secret experiments."

"You could if they were all down here," Katherine returned. "This town was huge on Pro Abolitionism during the Civil War, These tunnel goes on for _miles, _and it connects to other tunnels in the town's system. More than enough space to carve out a torture dungeon for endless anti-vampire fun." She paused and stared at all of them. "So, who's still upset that I ran off?"

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Damon hadn't felt this badly since he'd been hung over last week. At least then he had the pleasant blur of what he had done in his drunken haze as satisfaction.

Now he was pinned down to a table with lights that scorched his skin like he was over an open flame. His head felt like a paper bag filled with broken glass.

The light turned from burning to ice picks, as gloved fingers pried open his eyes, taping them into place. Wes Maxfield stared down at him, his own eyes were filled with red clots, but the look of mania wasn't hidden by the all the blood.

"What the hell are you doing?" Damon's words were a slurred wince, he looked up and over and saw the hanging bag of vervain still there, but empty, the needle and tubing dangled to the ground.

"_What needs to be done."_

The voice came from _behind _Wes, and Damon tried to look behind the psychopath doctor, but his head was held down firmly by the leather strap.

A face emerged from behind Wes, and Damon felt like a rush of vervain _had _gone in him at who he found himself staring _at._

**["**_Wait!"_ _Damon ran down the steps of Abilene's plantation house, his white shirt untucked, his boots half laced, his hair flying at a crazy angle. His boot steps squelched in the mud of an afternoon April rain. "You can't do this!"_

_The overseer turned to Damon, just as the boy came within a foot of him. The muzzle of the overseer's pistol was drawn in between the shoulder blades of Darius whose arms were bound tightly behind him with a triple length of rope. _

"_You better get back into the house Mr. Damon, this one has broken the law! The overseer stared at Darius like he was nothing but a trapped animal caught on his farm. "Trying to consort with a white lady is a hanging offense!"_

"_I did a lot more than _try _Sir," Darius voice was quiet, but he didn't mutter; what he said was very clear and very defiant._

_The overseer became enraged, he cuffed Darius hard on the back of his head with the butt of the pistol dropping Darius to his knees. "You worthless piece of shit!" The overseer grabbed Darius by his neck and drew him up._

"_Stop it!" Damon yelled, seeing Darius choke and gag, eyes beginning to roll out in his head. He stared to turn, but the overseer drew a shot on him with his pistol. _

"_I said get back, boy!" The overseer turned back to Darius and glared at him like he was worthless. "We need to exterminate this threat before it taints our community!"_

"_Damon!"_

_The voice erupted from the house, the front door slammed hard and Stefan propelled down the stairs in bare feet._

"_Stefan!" Damon whirled around to his brother, trying to block the sight of Darius from his view. He hurried towards him. "Get back in the house!"_

_Stefan didn't listen and continued to run towards Damon. The overseer's face drew from impatient to pissed off at the interruption of his duties. He swung his gun back around pulled the trigger at Darius' head just as Stefan came within two steps of Darius._

_Darius body's rocked forward onto his knees, and fell forward and Damon ran and grabbed Stefan away, his brother's screams deafening him as Darius's body landed into dirt of the road.__**]**_

"Darius?" Damon's face filtered into a confused as hell moment as Darius pinned his head down with surprising strength, strength above any human. "You're a vampire?-"

"Very good Master Damon," Darius leaned up right next to him, his breath blew on his face; Damon smelled the taint of blood on it. "I daresay you're better at analysis that your brother."

"Where's Stefan?" Damon's reaction was instant after Darius' words.

"You'll see him soon enough," Darius' moved his hand from Damon's head and grabbed him around the throat. "Which means we have to get you prepared." His mouth opened with a loud crinkle and over a dozen of tiny thorn like teeth dropped down from his mouth. His hand raised, grasping a syringe and he plunged it into his gums, extracting a syrupy amber colored liquid.

Damon had only a fraction of a second to try and understand what the hell had just happened before Darius plunged the needle deep into his jugular.

Damon roared in pain, the injection burning like hot wax in his body, his arms tightened, his eyes dilated to pinpoints. "You're not a vampire, what the hell are you?"'

"I'm a Vampire Damon, I assure you of that," Darius pulled back the needle and slammed it down on a metal tray. "The same vampire who ripped that pathetic overseer's head off when he tried to drag me off into the woods for the animals. The same vampire who made all of this happen." He swept his eyes around the cold metal exam room like it was a castle. "I created this project to exterminate your half breed kind." Darius fangs drew back up into his mouth. "Your kind who try so hard to assimilate, act like everyone else. But it's a _lie_ Damon. You're cockroaches pretending to be people. "You know how exterminators kill cockroaches?"

"No, but you're probably about to tell me anyway," Damon drew out, his body still jerking from the sensation of whatever Darius had shoved up his neck.

"They give them this chemical laced food, it turns their appetites ravenous, but from food sources except their own kind, and they devour each other. That's exactly I'm doing to you, Damon," Darius snapped the restraints off of Damon's arms and feet like he was breaking plastics twist ties, he grabbed Damon, and jerked him to his feet so fast that Damon felt a rush of nausea. "With the last full concentrated dose of my venom your craving for the blood of your own kind will overpower you."

"Thanks for the gory visual, but I'm going to have to pass," Damon's fangs retracted faster than he'd ever experienced, even in the last few days. He threw himself at Darius, but even with his heightened senses, Darius deflected the attack, and hurled Damon onto his back.

Damon collided hard into a table and the wood splintered apart, he grabbed the biggest piece and shoved it hard into Darius chest, the stick protruding clean through to the other side of his body.

Darius reared back from the attack, but didn't fall, and pulled the entire stick of himself back the way it came, it squelched in the thick sound of blood, he held it up and stared at it like it was a useless twig and threw it aside.

Damon had been alive for 177 years, and in that time had seen a shit load of odd and weird things, but this ranked up there as one of the highest. Darius wasn't an Original Vampire, and Damon didn't miss, that stake should've killed him.

"You're just full of surprises aren't you?" Damon found himself completely non-plussed by all the blood on the stake only a few feet away from where he stood, his adrenaline and his heart competed in a marathon through his body.

"It's called Evolution, Master Damon," Darius picked up the stake again, but threw it across the room. "Just so you don't get any misguided suicidal ideas."

"I'm more of a murder man myself-" Damon heard the sound a second before it happened, the noise of a cocked gun from behind him, and he turned and snatched the gun out of Wes' hand slamming it to the wall, dislodging the clip from the handle, sending them skittering away from each other.

He glared at Wes, with all the pent up anger and hate that had led him to still keep him alive for an unknown reason. "Nice try-"

He saw the next moves in increments, small seconds, heard a thundering voice behind him shout "Hey!" moments before a precisely carved and sharpened stake ripped through him and a blinding pain shot through his body.

Wes's voice was cold and calculating. "Thank you."

"_No!"_

Damon dropped hard onto his knees, the pain heavy, and thick, somewhere in the distance he thought he heard Stefan's voice, though it might have been just the pain. Then came the sound of gunshot, a metal bullet.

"Damon, Hey!" Stefan was right next to Damon, leaving Damon to wonder just how the hell things were being run now if he was still alive, and his brother had somehow found him, or maybe his mind had finally gone crazy from all the torture. The stake had missed his heart by millimeters, but with each breath Damon felt it scrapping close against the beating thing.

"_Stefan-"_ Damon saw his brother through hazed pain that got bright red hot as Stefan pulled hard and ripped it back out of his body. Damon reared in a scream. "Get out of here-" he turned his head down in the pain. "-or I'm going to kill you!-"

"No you're not, come on," came Stefan's idiotic reply as he jerked Damon none-too-gently too his feet.

Damon's vision began to turn from red to the normal colors of the shitty world that he found himself in, Darius stood, doing nothing but watching him. Inches from Darius stood a man, insanely tall, aimed a silver Beretta at him.

Darius was watching the man, but his attention was more on Wes, who was standing behind the metal exam table.

"What the hell did you think you were doing?" Darius question was molten hot on Wes, who was the one who had staked Damon moments ago. "You almost sacrificed the entire project because of flawed human anger!"

"I wasn't going to kill him _Darius," _Wes said to Darius like he was arguing with a bratty child. "I'm trying to regain the control you so obviously lost-" Wes attention shifted to the tall man in the room like he had just materialized there out of thin air. "I know you," he stared down the man, and Damon watched as Stefan glanced over to the man too.

Damon had learned to read the expressions of people in almost minute detail, a skill he adapted after becoming a vampire, to determine the best way to manipulate someone through compulsion. The man's expression was as tight as his grip on the trigger of his gun, but Damon watched as his expression shifted over like tumbling pebbles from a building that was starting to crumble.

Wes pointed a finger at the man, a Cheshire smile at his face. "You're the hunter who gave me my sweet little friend in the white dress."

The man's eyes shifted from tumbling into hostility to an emotion that encompassed rage, hate, and murder in the same image. "Shut up-" his voice echoed in the steel room.

"I'm trying to _thank you_," Wes snapped. "She's proven very useful for the success of our operations."

"I said _shut up!"_ the man waved the gun at Wes, like it was a dare, a one-more-movement-and-I'm going-to-off-you kind of dare.

Damon's brain felt masticated, but he looked back and forth in rapid fire motion, analyzing whose head to rip off first. Wes was a prime target, but the other man was a close second. But, Stefan glanced at him with the smallest shake of his head.

"She's dead," the man's voice the _Hunter's _voice was thick and heavy, and pissed off. "You son-of-a-bitch!"

Damon processed this information with a sting of shock, the girl in the white dress, the one he tried to help-

"You killed her?" Wes sounded both confused and manically upset. "She was _mine! _ I don't know what the hell kind of second class orphanage you got those other ones from, but they didn't last a day; she was my _best one! _Now who will test my experiments on? " He stared at the man like he was a mangy dog and grabbed another thick black large barreled gun off of a tray table and aimed it at him.

"You waste time with your anger Maxfield," Darius's voice was insistent and _old_, older than Damon remembered it sounding.

Wes turned on the Vampire, the aim of his gun never leaving the hunter. "Whose side are you on?" The cuts and scratches under his eyes began to leak tears of blood from the pumping of his heart. "You're _project _was just a half buried excuse in the ground before I found it; I _made_ you what you are!-"

"You speak out of turn," Darius voice was calm, eerily calm, like the last moment of the eye of a Hurricane before the first brutal reentry into the storm. "I'm more powerful than you can comprehend boy, I think it wise to _not _to piss me off." He turned to the hunter. "Isn't that right Sam?"

"What the hell is going on?" Damon side barred in a half mumbled mumble to Stefan.

"I'll tell you later," Stefan mumbled back, keeping most of his attention on Darius and Wes, but absorbing the sight of his brother standing right there.

Wes blew off the statement like Darius was a particularly annoying bully on the playground, before shifting his gaze over to 'Sam'. "Since you cost me one of my Feeders," he cocked the gun in his hand. "Maybe I'll just use you as a replacement."

The click of a second gun echoed from behind Wes, and there emerged a second, freakishly tall man aiming a silver Colt flat against Wes's neck, blood coated the man's hairline, but he didn't seem to notice, and Damon didn't notice at all, not in the way that he was supposed too. "You better rethink that statement."

"Damon!"

Damon couldn't comprehend what he was seeing or how stupid things suddenly got. She looked like crap, her face was covered in soot and dirt and her mouth and shirt front was stained in blood. "Elena-" he backed away from her as she started to run towards him. "No-stay back!"

The stake that Wes had stabbed Damon with was lying on the ground, and Wes crouched, hand reaching out to grab it.

"Don't move!" Sam barked, cocking his gun and placing it on the back of Wes' neck before he could complete his action.

"You really need to teach your children better table manners _Darius_," the second man spoke through a growl. "Leaving all those poor tourists they've been snacking on for anyone to find." He pulled something out of his jacket, a 20 millimeter syringe filled to the top with blood "Leaves room for me to extract enough dead man's blood to kill every last one of your entourage."

"It always amazes me how much cockiness can be packed into you Dean Winchester," Darius addressed the other man by name.

"Yeah well get in line," he withdrew a blood stained machete from behind his back and wielded it at Darius. "Now give us Mr. Salvatore's daylight ring and we'll get the killing of your operation underway."

Damon now _really _had no idea what the hell had gone on, or if he should just risk the now acrid taste of human blood and just kill these two gun wielding hunters, but Stefan snatched his arm back, his dark eyes half a glower, half a 'don't' look. And as much as Damon wanted to punch his brother in the face for not leaving when he told him too, there wasn't exactly time for throwing blows.

Darius smiled the same smile he had given Damon the summer when he taught him how to bridle a horse. "Did you really think it would be that easy?"

Dean's expression was eerily calm. "Did you?"

Out of the corner of his eye Damon watched as Sam crept up behind Darius, another bloodstained machete raising in the air.

Darius turned at the last moment and deflected the blow, tossing the man hard into the exam table, where he fell _hard,_ metal instruments and needles raining down on him from the tray table. But despite all of this he still had a hold of his knife, and he aimed another strike at Darius' neck. The blade missed again and was thrown to the side in a hard slicing sound that landed at Elena's feet just as Sam was hurled into the air and smacked down hard against the steel exam table, this time with a bone cracking sound that dented the table.

Stefan had heard the noise of vertebra popping in a constant loop in his head for nearly 20 years, it was the same noise that he heard the second Sam hit the exam table. The hunter's face contoured in guttural pain, but his scream died on his mouth as Darius pinned him down by the neck squeezing a tortured, dying gasp out of him. He squeezed harder, and Sam's breath went from tortured to non-existent, the hands grabbing Darius' neck went slack.

"_Sam!" _

The ultra-heightened senses of the vampires picked up the earth shattering magnitude that Dean Winchester screamed his brother's name.

"If you so much as breathe in my direction Dean," Darius stared over the slack body of the hunter stopping Dean's movements. "I am going to flay your brother alive and feed his scraps to my children."

Elena felt a rippled tremble that had nothing to do with fear course through Dean's body, his eyes were stony, hard, _angry. _Her heart pounded furiously as she watched as Damon flicked his gaze over to her, a part of her 'happy' that he was alive, but the part being terrified was still overriding it. Her boot brushed against Sam's fallen machete, the point of the blade was angled at the tip of her shoe. She didn't glance at it to not give any indication that she knew it was there.

"Now that we have an understanding, we can proceed."

Elena had only a second to process what Darius meant before her arms were jerked behind her back, a second later Dean followed suit. Wes soon emerged on her right, but the strength she felt wasn't human, something else was holding her down. But she couldn't look behind her before the doctor pulled out a hypodermic needle and plunged it into her carotid artery.

"Elena!" Damon's shout for her was murderous.

"Try anything Damon, and I will kill Mr. Winchester here outright," Darius threatened over Sam's unconsciousness form.

Damon didn't know these two hunters from the man down the street that he ate for breakfast year ago. But he knew his girlfriend, and he wasn't about to listen to Wes, he was about to_ kill_ him. He moved a fraction, about to hurl himself on the shit ass doctor but his arm was jerked back by Stefan.

"Damon don't!-" Stefan didn't' try to hide or mumble his warning. His heart pounded at the sight of Elena being held in the arms of a vampire who looked at her like she was trash; Wes was breathing down her neck, looking at her like she was something else- But she was still _present_, able to fight - Seeing Sam, a man who had risked his life for him even when he shouldn't have, so easy to be killed-

"What is _wrong_ with you?" Damon snarked angrily at him.

"Your brother is loyal to a fault Damon. The only reason he's here at all is because of our former benefactor there," Wes nodded at Sam's unconscious body pulling back on the needle in Elena's neck, filling the syringe with blood. She gasped at the pain.

Damon's face crawled with spider webbed veins at the smell of blood, he felt his fangs retract, he forced himself to stay away even with every part of him that screamed to attack the source of the blood until it was emptied.

Wes walked casually with the syringe of Elena's blood to the still form of the hunter. "If there are any objections," Wes stared at Darius. "By all means-"

Darius moved a step away from the table, but his eyes were far from compliant.

Dean jerked hard against the vampire that was holding him. _"If you touch him I swear to god!"_

Wes plunge the needle into Sam's neck.

"_You bitch!" _Dean roared, struggling harder against the vampire, bucking like a horse, nearly breaking the hold on him.

The vampire sensed it and turned his shoulder up a hard right, the joints popping to a near dislocation.

"_You're dead!"_

"See, the thing is I'm _not,"_ Wes plunged the entire contents of the needle into Sam's neck, discarding it casually a moment later. "But he will be. Your brother cost me a valuable source for my experiments Mr. Winchester," Wes bent down low to the floor and when he stood back up he had the hunter's silver gun in his hand.

Elena moved the blade at her foot again, shifting with slow movements so that the flat of the blade was on her shoe, hovering there like a balance beam.

Wes placed the muzzle right against Sam's forehead. "It's only fitting that he procures my replacement."

Elena reared her head back and smacked it into her capturer, it stunned him enough so that he let go of her, she drew back her fangs, but she didn't attack, she waited, until the second vampire released Dean to attack her in retaliation, and flung the machete blade up and at him.

It was a badly calculated aim, but Dean caught it by the base of the blade, blood slashed out of his palm, he swung back at the vampires in a hard fast movement that took his head clean off his body.

Wes's grip on the gun had become distracted at all the noise, but he quickly re-aimed his shot.

Stefan finally took his opportunity and slammed Wes hard into the wall, the gun firing into the table leg.

The vampire that had grabbed Elena glared at her with hate that walked the edge of sleaze, like he wanted to work her over after she was a corpse. "Time to die bitch." He retracted his multiple fangs and ripped into her neck.

Elena screamed, the pain was red hot; but then it all ended abruptly. The vampire's body fell on her in a boneless heap, Damon holding his still warm beating heart in his hand, he let it drop into a rolled mess of blood.

"Damon-" Elena breathed his name out in a terrified whisper.

Damon pulled the body off of her and dropped it like a pile of wood to the ground.

Elena reached out and threw her arms around his neck, finally able to touch him. She felt his heartbeat slamming against her chest, felt his hands in her hair.

But it was only a brief moment before Damon pulled her off of him; his pupils were wide and dilated as he stared at the blood on her neck. "You need to go-"

Elena shifted her gaze over to Sam; he still wasn't moving. Dean ran to him, shaking his jacket, the edge of the collar stained in blood. Stefan had Wes pinned up against the wall and Darius had vanished from the room entirely.

"Sam, hey!"

Elena watched Dean slap his brother's face, and then started CPR with a terrified calling of his name.

"Elena _now!"_ Damon jerked her back and started to pull her along.

"No, we can't!" Elena shouted back. "We have to help them!"

Damon glanced over at the two men for only the briefest of moments like he was just examining a scrap of paper that he didn't drop on the road. "Are you _kidding_ me?"

"They saved our lives!" Elena moved past him before he tried to force her back again and ran to the exam table where Dean was compressing cupped hands hard into Sam's ribs. Sam lay completely still, his face taken over by a color leaching gray. She drew her ear down to his chest there was no movement of air from his diaphragm, but she heard his heart faintly thumping in his body.

She moved back and pushed hard on his sternum, hearing his ribs crack from her single amount of pressure.

"Damnit Sammy c'mon!" Dean placed one last breath in Sam's mouth and Sam jolted like he'd been electrocuted, shooting up with a choking sound, his large hand slammed into her. Sam still looked dazed, and hurt, but breathing, he took in the sight of Elena hovering over him.

Dean instantly grabbed his arm "Hey, you back with me?"

"Come on," Elena repeated Dean's words, and helped him haul Sam to his feet. Even with her extra strength he nearly toppled her over, and he stood like it was painful. But he pulled his weight off of her and grabbed his gun back from where it had landed askew on the table, wobbling to his feet, but stayed there once he found them.

Damon's mind was still half fuzzy from days of constant torture, but adrenaline coursing through started to cancel out that feeling, splitting his thoughts into two areas: the one where Elena stood next to men who were trained to _kill_ her, and the one where Stefan pinned Wes high against the wall of the lab in a hold that was Damon knew was one to snap his neck. Elena almost fell over under the weight of the man she tried to lift, a sign that something had drained her earlier.

But the scent of blood on her neck was strong, even from where Damon stood away from her. The odor of it filled his nostrils and threw his veins into a black spider webbed pattern across his face.

Stefan felt the carotid artery in Wes's neck like it was a plump grape between his fingers.

Wes coughed out stunted puffs of breath. "You came just in time."

Stefan squeezed harder, ending Wes's words at that. "You don't get to talk, not anymore, not after what you did to Damon, and that girl, and to Sam-"

"_Sam?"_ Wes pulled on the last dregs of his breath. "You're on a first name basis with hunters? " A fractured smile emerged from Wes's face like a badly choreographed cabaret act, blood staining his teeth. His eyes rolled over to Sam who stared at the scene along with Dean and Elena. "Must've been quite a story. The only thing I did to that girl was turn her into one of you," Wes pulled on the last dregs of breath.

Stefan applied tighter pressure, Wes' mouth hung open in a silent gasp. Stefan lifted him up off the floor a good five inches by the throat. "I thought I told you not to talk-maybe I'll just squeeze your neck until I your vocal chords sever so you don't have the option anymore-"

"You probably should stop being a dick about this," Damon emerged beside Stefan, at an almost slow pace that only had half to do with all that had been done to him before, making no move to intervene any move to intervene. "People who call me a psychopath have never seen my brother when he's pissed off-" Damon began groping Wes' lab coat pockets, yanking out a wallet, and an extra clip of bullets.

"Get out of here Damon, I have this." Stefan retorted, in a low, threatening growl, never taking his eyes off of Wes's. He watched the doctor's go opaque from the lack of oxygen.

"Back off from the head popping for a second brother, I need to ask him a question while his neck is still intact," Damon watched Stefan release Wes's neck long enough for Wes to take the tiniest fraction of a breath to keep from asphyxiating then he got down right next to Wes' blood shot eyes. "Where's my ring? And before you answer, the phrase: '_I don't know'_ equals a broken leg," Damon placed a hand on Wes's lower leg and pulled back hard.

Wes reared back, not saying anything but a grunted scream.

"You know, I didn't quite catch that-" Damon returned, applying more pressure.

Wes screamed again. "I don't have it anymore!"

"But you did-_"_ Sam moved to stand beside Stefan. "Darius gave it back to you for safe keeping, but you put it somewhere else didn't you?"

Damon gave a side eyed looked to the hunter, who's enormous boots clunked over the concrete floor with huge thuds, like the Clydesdale horses that used to pull his father's carriage during a holiday.

Sam's eyes were deadly serious. "Where is it now?"

Wes didn't speak, and Damon was pretty sure it wasn't because he couldn't', because he'd been proving that theory wrong this entire time.

"Ordinarily I like to _kill_ hunters rather than listen to them, but consider it _Opposite Day," _Damon applied tighter pressure to Wes's leg, bending it sideways at angle that made the bone rip out of alignment. "Answer the question."

Wes screamed louder "You won'," Wes couldn't get the 't' out of "You won't be able to find it in time."

"Oh I'm pretty sure we will, because of the all the bullshit you just told us," Dean looked high up at the half choked face of Wes Maxfield pinned to the wall. "Darius never gave you the ring, he still has it because you thought that keeping it with that fanged tooth bitch would protect it so you could keep busy playing Dr. Frankenstein," Dean's eyes grew hard, like marble. "It's just too bad you're wrong."

Dean moved away from Wes. Elena following him, which piqued Damon's interest, not because he was jealous, but because the man was a _hunter _and she was the thing that hunters_ hunted. _Both walked out the opened doorway to the lab that Damon didn't even realize was _open _until that moment because he was too busy being tortured. But he didn't leave, not yet.

"We're done here," Stefan released Wes's neck, at the same moment Damon broke off the top of the IV pole. He snatched Wes by the collar of his shirt and slammed him up against the metal exam table, bending the metal like it was a twisty tie around Wes' left wrist like a handcuff.

"At least for a moment," Damon stood back up slowly, eyes boring like nails into Wes' He walked out after the two hunters into the hallway, the lights burning his eyes, and sizzling his skin. It was painful, but because it wasn't the _actual _sun, it would never kill him, only torture him endlessly. But right now, the pain from being shot at overrode anything the light was doing to his skin.

"You two," Damon made the two men turn the moment they stepped into the hallway, both sets of eyes watching him with a hairline trigger. "My charity reserves for hunters just plummeted, so you have three seconds to plead a case as to why I shouldn't rip your throats out."

"Here's my case," Dean held up a gleaming machete, thick with blood, sharp end out. "I've killed enough vamps to pass the number of candles on your birthday cake." His eyes were harder as granite. "But your brother over there gave us enough reason to save your ass, don't make me regret it."

Damon turned to Stefan with a look like he had done something stupid. "Trusting hunters has never led to anything good."

"It saved your life Damon," Stefan threw back. "So how about you drop it so we can find your ring?"

"Right my _ring,"_ Damon returned in dripping sarcasm. "You mean the one that Darius, a man we thought we watched die 155 years ago but actually survived because he's an all-powerful dick vamp who just spent the last five days and five years torturing me has, _that _ring? Sure Stef, piece of cake-"

"You're wasting time arguing," Sam cut in and Damon shot daggers at him for at the intrusion on his and Stefan's argument.

Damon turned to the hunter, about to decide how much blood someone of his height had running though his body. "I'm sorry, was I asking anything of you?"

Sam wasn't fazed. "If Darius leaves with your ring, then you're stuck here."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Damon returned, but his eyes weren't on the hunter, or on anyone. The anger, and the pain of being trapped back in this hole, even after Stefan had rescued him burned as hotly as a candle, because of the time Stefan _hadn't _ come to rescue him.

The look Stefan gave Damon was heavy, like bricks tumbling off of a cliff from a dilapidated house. "Damon, I-"

Damon reared back his fist and pummeled it into the side of Stefan's head, watching Stefan go down like a felled tree.

"Damon!" Elena yelled in outrage.

Damon ignored her. "I know Brother. Let's not talk about it okay?"

Stefan climbed up to his feet, shrugging off Elena's hand, torking his jaw back into alignment in a painful maneuver. After all the beatings he'd taken before, this was almost like a paper cut. Sam and Dean watched, but didn't intervene. And Stefan suspected it had nothing to do with them being hunters, was everything to do with them being brothers.

Stefan was only on his feet again for a second before he was jerked forward like he'd been shoved. His face contorted in pain, a moment later he looked down at a blooming stain of blood on his shirt.

"_Stefan!"_ Elena's voice shouted in horror, for the millionth time that day watching as Stefan dropped into a crouch, groaning, blood leaking in-between the fingers of the hand that he placed on his chest.

Damon turned to look into the opened doorway of the exam room. Wes was still firmly shackled to the table, but he was holding a gun in his hand, the trigger of it still smoking.

The hunters drew a bead on the doctor with their guns. Damon eyed the blood leaking on Stefan's shirt in hostile rage. "Dick move, Wes!"

"I doubt you'll think so in a minute," Wes said, calmly, too calmly.

The doctor's voice reached Damon like the words were echoing off a long tunnel. He turned back around and fully took in the sight of the blood on Stefan's shirt, he heard Stefan's heart beat pumping it out bright red through the wound.

Stefan looked up from groping at the hole, over to his brother, whose blood crept up the veins of his face like fast moving insects. "Damon-"

Damon's fangs pulled down like they were spring loaded, the blood was strong up his nose. He tried to fight it off, to resist. But he couldn't, there was just so much of it. He found himself completely unable to resist what his body was craving anymore; he jumped at Stefan in a blur of speed.

Stefan dodged Damon's attack moving to the opposite side of the hallway, Damon drew nearer like lion attacking prey, blurring Stefan into a wall.

"Damon don't!" Elena screamed She ran to Damon and pulled his arms. _"Damon!" _ She jerked at him harder, but he didn't move.

Stefan grabbed at Damon's arm that reached for him and pinned it down behind his back, but Damon broke free, and threw Stefan hard across the floor.

Stefan jumped back up to his feet, watching Damon's launch itself at him again.

Dean's machete blade was up by the back of Damon's neck, the flat of the blade moving in an arch to his skull. But before he could connect Damon turned and threw him into the wall hard, Dean landed in a hard daze.

Sam raised his knife and slashed it clean through Damon's shoulder. Damon lurched for just a moment but the adrenaline from the venom in his system barely allowed him to feel anything. He ripped the knife out of him, and sped past Sam so fast that the hunter was thrown into the opposite wall.

Damon ran again at Stefan, but Elena jumped in the way, grabbing at his shoulders in a death hold. "Stop!"

"_I can't help it!"_ Damon could smell Stefan's blood leaking into every orifice of his body.

"Elena get out of here, you're bleeding, he's going to kill you-" Stefan saw the cagey feral look in Damon's eyes, but also the tortured anger behind what he couldn't control.

"_Go!"_ Damon clenched out he words in his teeth into one long desperate sound.

"He's your _brother _Damon!" Elena grabbed his face, exposing the still bleeding wound at her carotid. "You can fight this! I know you can fight this!-"

Damon's breath grew heavier, turned to a different sight, the blood of Elena's carotid inches away from his mouth.

"Elena," his voice sounded pained, tortured, he bit hard into her neck and she screamed.

"Hey!" Sam was back on his feet, the stake he'd used in the dark little room stained in Marissa's dried blood. He raised the stake at Damon's back.

Stefan saw the hunter take aim at Damon. He tore hard into his wound with his hand, opening it up to more leaking blood. "Damon, hey, look over here!" He held up his blood red palm. "You smell that?"

Damon pulled off of Elena's neck in a sucking motion; she jerked back with a cried gasp.

Damon's eyes went almost black from dilatation, staring at the blood on Stefan's hand like it was a neon sign.

"That's good right, it's what you want isn't it?" Stefan backed up slowly down the long hallway "Feed on me Brother, not her-"

Blood dripped from Damon's fangs as he half staggered to the overwhelming scent of Stefan's blood, eyes watching it leak and patter down Stefan's shredded shirt.

Dean was back on his feet, and watching as Damon walked closer to Stefan, inch by inch like he was hypnotized. A foot away from the hunter Sam watched the same scene, eyes widening looking from Stefan to Damon. They both saw what Stefan saw, the full on hunger in Damon's eyes.

"Stefan don't!" Sam shouted as Stefan led Damon away like a horse to a stream of water.

"He's too far gone," Dean shouted. "You can't fix this!"

"You heard them, _getout!"_ Damon's voice was fast and angry like he was crushing marbles in between his fangs.

"I'm not afraid of you Damon," Stefan stopped backing up and stood in front of Damon, Damon's once green blue eyes had turned almost black from all the blood rushing up in them.

Damon started to breathe hard almost like he was hyperventilating, Stefan's blood mere centimeters from his face.

Stefan heard the sound of a blade being raised in a slice through the air. "Guys don't!" He never took his eyes off of Damon as he yelled this to Sam and Dean. "It's okay," Stefan spoke slowly, almost softly. "Just feed on me," Damon stared at the blood on Stefan like a half starved curious child to an entire plate of food; he moved down towards the bleeding bullet hole-

Stefan placed his hands on Damon's throat, fingers starting to torque, to break Damon's neck. But he underestimated the strength that Damon now possessed.

Damon jerked free of Stefan's grip before the maneuver could be completed. He slammed Stefan hard into wall and was on him before Stefan could catch his breath.

Stefan jerked, trying to buck Damon off of him, grunting a scream as Damon's fangs broke into the bullet wound, tearing it wide.

"_Damon stop!"_ Elena's scream tore over the sounds of Stefan's, she ran to Damon, jerking up at his body as Stefan's scream reached a higher pitch. "_STOP IT!"_ She pulled with as much strength as she possessed, but she still couldn't move him. Stefan's head was arched up in pain.

Damon heard Elena, but he couldn't stop. The blood was warm, flowing, it filled his mouth to capacity, pumping in thick veins from a fast beating heart.

Elena watched Sam throw a piece of jagged wood over to Dean who grasped it and raised it high over Damon's back, in a blow that wouldn't miss this time.

"No!" Elena screamed, taking off in a run to stop him.

Then there came a hard tearing sound, and one last baying sound from Stefan; his body jerked back hard. A spray of blood so dark that it was black arched up and out like an overflowing fountain.

"_No!-Stefan!"_ Elena jolted like she'd been snapped back by a rubber band, watching in horrified shock as Stefan listed to the side and fell hard on the concrete.

Damon jerked the moment he heard the resonating thud of Stefan's body hitting the ground. His eyes had burned with such a bright clarity as he fed, but then the colors faded back into their sharp realness. _"Stefan-?! "_

Stefan lay splayed on the concrete – his shirt was spread apart in blood, his heart was half torn from his body, his skin a deep gray, eyes open in glazed pain.

"_Stefan-"_ Damon tasted the still warm blood in his mouth.

**[**_"Stefan!" Damon ran through the woods, the baying scream resonated like a struck masonry anvil. He emerged from a scratchy thicket into a clearing. Stefan was groped on the ground, his foot in an iron bear trap._**]**

"Stefan-!" Damon slammed hard onto his knees by Stefan head. He shook him hard, blood coating his hands like gloves. Stefan's head jerked lifelessly under Damon's hands, not moving. "Stef-_Stefan!-_"

**["**_Stef!" Damon dropped into a crouch in the grass and purple Heather. He jerked at the bear trap, but the iron claws didn't lift. _

"_Damon," Stefan called out Damon's name in a warbled plea. _

"_Hold on Brother!" Damon tugged harder, trying to remove the trap with just his bare hands.__**]**_

Elena was on her knees beside Damon, her face torn in jagged crying as she said Stefan's name in a shredded sound over and over again.

"No," The hunters moved, Damon could hear their heavy resonating footsteps, but they became drowned out by the slamming banging of his heart. "Nonono," Damon grabbed at Stefan's neck, his brother's blood coating his brother. _"Nonono! _You're not- _STEFAN!" _ Damon's scream ripped through the air.

**xxxxXxxxx**

The tunnel continued on the way it started, very long and extensive, and none of them knew where they were going, Caroline was now in the lead with Katherine who looked like she didn't know how to work a flashlight, she kept clicking it on and off on and off, while grabbing at her shoulder wound.

"Do you see anything?" Jeremey asked from darkness behind them. He kept his ears tuned behind him, to make sure that they weren't being followed by any of those vampires out for revenge.

"This hallway goes on for miles," Caroline stepped over a broken piece of something that snapped so much like human bone that she didn't want to think about it. "I don't even know where I'm going!"

"That's not exactly helpful," Katherine pointed out like Caroline was simple.

Caroline stopped walking for a second and shined the light right in Katherine's eyes. "Seriously?" You know, I should've just _left_ you back with those weirdo creepy vampires instead!"

"They were _hardly_ Vampires, Caroline," Katherine returned with her usual arrogance, despite the fact that they had nearly killed her not an hour ago. "_Disgusting_ half breed things who needed to learn how to fight and brush their teeth is a better description-"

"Yeah, and they still would've killed your ass if it hadn't been for me."

"What do you want- A muffin basket?" Katherine snapped back to Caroline.

"Enough you too!" Matt shouted, walking right by Jeremy and Bonnie. "Those vampires-"

"Stop calling them Vampires, Mattie," Katherine snapped. "You're insulting my race."

"Those _vampires,_" Matt continued staring Katherine down. "They almost killed you Katherine, and who knows how many of them are down here-"

"So don't think about it," Katherine pointed out. Her broken shoe heel cracked over more human bone like things. She stared at it with an almost fascination. "They appear to be well fed."

"Shut up Katherine!" Jeremey called up to her. "Just keep your eyes in front of you and let us know if you see anything trying to kill us," His voice lowered as he stared at the blood on her shoulder leaking out from the torn fragments of Matt's shirt. "And try not to fall over, that's not a flesh wound."

Katherine grasped at her shoulder and glared at him and was about to retort that she didn't take orders from a Gilbert when Bonnie suddenly turned around, aiming her flashlight behind her.

Jeremey turned with her, watching her shine her beam across a hallway made up of stone bricks in a pattern of disarray. "What is it?"

Bonnie's light cut through the murky darkness, moving over the rights, lighting up a figure standing there: a young brunette girl in a white dress half soaked in blood.

"What is it?" Caroline echoed Jeremey's words and turned to Bonnie's lit flashlight, seeing nothing but the rock. "Bonnie-"

"_Where am I?" _The girl's head moved frantically back and forth like a caged butterfly. _"What's happening?-"_

"What the hell is going on?" Katherine snarled, the pain from her injuries seeping into her words like her blood soaked into the fabric of the makeshift bandage.

The girl turned to stare at Kathrine, her eyes so shockingly green they seemed to glow in the beam of Bonnie's flashlight.

"_Am I DEAD?"_

"I'm sorry," Bonnie didn't know what else to say, she didn't even know what the girl _was. _ She usually got a sense of what kind of supernatural creature had just died, but whatever this girl was, she hadn't been it for long, so the only thing Bonnie got from her was that she was scared.

"_Where's my mom?"_

"It's going to be okay," Bonnie stepped forward with a sad kind of reassuring smile, reaching out her hands towards the girl.

She backed up like Bonnie's touch was a lit blow torch. "No no- I _saw _her, but then she was gone! I keep looking, but I can't find her!"

"It's alright, I promise," Bonnie opened her palm her index and thumb brushing the girl's bare arm, feeling her spirit start to dissolve, but at the last minute she jerked back.

The moment where Bonnie began to feel the pain of her death burned and melted into the resistance the girl used to pull away, sending Bonnie toppling to her knees, her flashlight clattering to the hard ground.

"Bonnie!" Jeremy reached down and grabbed her arm. "Bonnie, are you okay?"

The girl's spirit stared at Bonnie, eyes a sheen of tears. "I want my mom-" She turned and fled, footsteps soundless, her body half dissolving into mist as she ran.

"_Bonnie!"_ Jeremey's voice was scared because Bonnie hadn't answered him, just remained in his grasp in the darkness created by her fallen flashlight.

"It was a ghost-" Bonnie's fingers closed around the neck of her flashlight and she picked it up. "She broke my hold-"

Caroline stared at her in disbelief. "Is that even possible?"

"I felt her, but then she kept saying she wanted her mom, and I felt all this _need _-" Bonnie raised her flashlight. Her beam sweeping back over the spot where the girl had just been, to someone else standing there, and she started.

"Stefan?"

Stefan stood only half a foot from her, watching her.

Caroline turned immediately at the sound of the name, looking where Bonnie's light was shining. "Stefan?" Caroline added her own light over top of Bonnie's "Where? Bonnie-" Her light illuminated nothing but the jagged wall of bricks. "I don't see anything-"

Bonnie's expression dropped from confusion at the realization of what Caroline had just said.

Stefan's form was solid, but half transparent, he stepped closer to Bonnie, watching her. "Bonnie?" His dark brows furrowed in confusion. How'd you get here?" he looked back behind him at the maze of a hallway half swallowed in darkness. "How did I get back in the tunnels?-"

"Something happened Stefan," Bonnie interrupted him, her voice gone from shock to something else. "We haven't found you guys yet-"

"Stefan-" Caroline voice broke into a shiver the understanding of it all settling over her like a blast of frigid air. "_No-" _her voice shuddered, and streaked apart into tears.

Matt and Jeremey's faces fell as they looked around to the empty space that Bonnie was talking too, Katherine closed her mouth hard, looking like someone had drowned her, the hand on her bloody shoulder falling lax to her side, her breathing growing heavy.

The realization finally crawled across Stefan's face, part shock, part disbelief. He stared down, as if noticing himself for the first time. His shirt was a shredded mess of torn blood and jagged flesh. "No, I'm not – I can't be- Bonnie listen to me," He took another step to her, his feet making no noise on the ground. "I can't go yet-not now."

"Bonnie?" Caroline's words leaked more tears out of her eyes. "What's he saying?"

"Damon's back there," Stefan's words were pleading "Wes injected him with a stronger Ripper venom. The hunger, he can't turn it off- he's going to destroy himself-"

**xxxxxxXxxxxx**

**[ **_"What'd you go and do Brother?" Damon got out through half frustrated tears at trying to rip the trap bare handed off of Stefan's foot. He could see the pin hole waiting for the pin that would release it, the one that he didn't _have. _Stefan began to shake from the pain. Damon pulled up harder. The trap sprung free blood coating his hands in long jagged cuts._

_Damon ripped off the sleeve of his shirt and wrapped it around Stefan's bleeding foot._

_Stefan whimpered, "I'm sorry Damon, I was trying to find you-"_**]**

Damon fell forward staring at Stefan's pale skin and sightless eyes. "What did you do? - _What did you do!?_" He drew Stefan to him, arms going around his neck in a half choked hold, fingers deep into the flesh, a choking shudder of tears shook through him like an earthquake, then exploded into a sob; his heart ripped open and split out his body just like his brother's.

Far off and away he could hear Elena crying, but all Damon felt was the lifeless body of his little brother in his hold. His voice broke into a keening sob, he pushed his face forward into Stefan's neck, tears burning hotter than vervain down both their skin.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

"You have to find a way to keep me here," Stefan felt like he was floating, even though he still saw his feet on the ground. The feeling was pulling him towards Bonnie, towards another plane.

"Stefan I don't know how-" Bonnie's voice falling like a heavy stone. No one does -" her voice cracked.

"You just said that that girl did it!" Caroline's voice wept. "She ran from you-you can try it-"

"I didn't do it, Caroline!" Bonnie's shout was something horrible, a jagged slash across her palm. She turned to Stefan with shining eyes. "I _can't-"_

"Please," Stefan couldn't feel himself breathing anymore, what was left of him started to pull apart. "Find a way. You've done it before, you've saved us before. I just got him back-"

Stefan's figure was starting to lighten into a vapor, one that seemed like it would dissolve with a single touch. It was same kind of thing that Bonnie had seen become of all the supernatural ghosts moments before they passed through her to the Other Side.

"I can't leave," Stefan's voice began to shake. "I don't want to leave, he's my brother Bonnie-"

Bonnie could no longer contain the tears that broke all over her face. "I'm so sorry Stefan-"

Stefan's form began to tremble, Bonnie watched him bite his lip, tears emerging and spilling from his vapored form.

**xxxxXxxxx**

The blood burned in Damon's mouth, choking him as he couldn't catch his breath, Stefan's face was a mess of Damon's bloody hand prints on it. He swallowed all the mess the crying had produced, an acrid metallic taste in his mouth that tasted nothing like his brother's blood.

Elena was next to Stefan's head, carding fingers through his hair, her face soaked in tears. Damon set his brother down on the cold concrete, fingers curling on Stefan's still warm arm. He stood back wobbly on his knees like he was drunk, clothes now coated in blood. He moved his eyes over the hunters, but he didn't see them.

"Damon," Elena's voice thick and so full of sadness it was about to break apart. She didn't know what to do, she couldn't swallow, she couldn't breathe.

Damon roared a horrible noise vivisected in pure agony. He punched two huge creators into the wall, causing one of the hunters to jump back before that move was on his head.

The man took a fighting stance, but didn't do anything more than watch as Damon tore his fist out of wall, raining hailstorm of concrete pebbles over himself, sending the hallway into a fog of dust He turned to attack the opposite wall in the same manner, punching another fist through the wall, ringing the hole in Stefan's dried blood. He half felt his feet want to fall out from under him, but then spotted the open door to the exam room.

He pulled up from the wall, and walked towards the opened room.


	12. Chapter 12

**CHAPTER TWELVE**

"_Nothing is more deadly than a deserted, waiting street."_

~Harper Lee; To Kill a Mockingbird

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

Dean tracked the form of Damon Salvatore as he skulked at a predatory slowness back into the exam room, a movement that he had seen on countless monsters, and vampires right before they attacked. He grasped his machete, following after Damon.

Sam knelt down at Stefan's bloody body, half of his heart was protruded out of his chest. Sam stared at his lifeless body it with the same shock he felt when he saw Marissa's after he staked her; the brutality of something that should have never happened.

Dean's footsteps lifted Sam's head up to see Damon Salvatore move like a predator back into the exam room. Dean close behind him, but the vampire didn't notice. Dean met Sam's eyes moments before he disappeared into the exam room behind the last living Salvatore.

Elena's voice was reduced to shredded sobs. Sam watched as she lifted one of Stefan's hands to her mouth and kissed it, then his face, choking on a terrible pained cry. He didn't touch her or try to comfort her, at that moment he knew there was nothing he could do but watched as she grieved for the agonizing loss of her friend.

"You've exceeded my expectations," Wes Maxfield's voice rang in a sing song voice, the moment the vampire stepped into the white room that smelled like blood and over pungent herbs. Wes cocked his head to Damon, "Congratulations, you are now the first successful Augustine Vampire."

"You killed my brother," Damon's voice was shocked, but there was an undercurrent of danger in it.

The same kind of voice Dean had heard from himself whenever someone had dared to touch his own brother.

"You finally answered my question,_"_ Wes returned with an arrogance that went far and beyond someone should be welded down to a chair in front of a vampire. His gaze turned pitiful like he was indulging a poor idiot child. "And _no _I didn't. _You _killed your little brother, Damon, his blood is clearly all over your hands, not mine."

"No actually," Dean moved from the hallway into the steel lined room, machete blade out, glinting in the too bright light, his gun drawn over the blade. "It's not."

Damon turned to him, his eyes almost a solid red from blood, face a mess of wet streaks. "Get out!"

Dean took another step towards the Vampire. "You didn't kill your brother-"

"_I will rip your head off if you don't leave!"_ Damon screamed at Dean, but didn't move to do what he threatened.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Sam turned his head up and back, the hallway was silent, too silent for a place that housed vampires. He picked his machete up off the ground from where it had been flung, setting a hand on Elena's shoulder. "Stay here with him, alright?"

Her tears caught on his thumb, and they were wiped off when he moved his hand. He stood up in a low crouch, raising his machete out in a fighting stance as he walked down the hallway filled with bloody footprints made from Stefan Salvatore's drying blood.

**xxxxXxxxx**

Wes blew off Dean's the statement like it was bogus one, tainted in lies instead of blood. "You witnessed a, what do you call them-_Vamps?_ -tear into the flesh of his own brother until his hear was ripped from his body. Explain to me how you think he didn't kill him?"

"Because you did," Dean growled, staring at the arrogant face of Wes. "It's your fingerprints all over the tainted water supply-"

"I only showed him the door" Wes rationalized, staring at the form of Damon Salvatore who looked like he was about to screw any restraint that he had left and kill the doctor outright. "I didn't force him to walk through it."

"How about you just cut the bullshit Doushbag?" Dean raised his gun higher.

Wes laughed, blowing it all off arrogantly. "And what bullshit would that be exactly?"

Dean licked his lower lip, swiping his hand across it angrily. He stepped closer to Wes, the blade razor sharp, only a foot away from Wes's neck. Wes Maxfield tried to hide it, but a moment of fear came across his face when Dean brought the blade down hard, cutting through metal rods holding Wes to the exam table leg.

Wes pulled his arms up and high, rubbing his wrists hard, glancing from Damon to the door like he was calculating an escape route.

Damon looked at Dean with a rage that turned the room molten. "That's not going to help, I'm still going to shred him alive and _feed _pieces of himself to himself!"

"And I'm not going to stop you."

Both the Vampire and the Vampire torturer stared at Dean, each for a different reason.

Wes blinked up at Dean like he had misheard. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Sam emerged like a ghost. He stood in the doorway, effectively blocking it with his tall frame, his machete hung loosely in his hand. "Did you honestly think that you were just going to get away with what you've done?"

"I'm sorry-" Wes stared from Sam in the doorway to Dean like he was trying to decide between punishing one stupid thing or another stupid thing. "My impression of hunters were that they were _smart-_ Guess you two broke the mold-_"_

Dean laughed, low and quiet, dropping his head, he raised it back up to stare at Wes staring at him. "Mad scientist dousbag dicks, I tell ya; they _really_ don't get it do they Sammy?"

"No they don't Dean," Sam returned in the low rumbled voice that was like a deadly thing.

Dean continued to stare down Wes. ""I have zero loyalty to Vamps-I'll put every one of those sons-of-bitches to my blade when they're stupid enough to get in my way, but that's what this is about."

From the doorway, Sam sheathed his machete up his coat in one slow long movement, then drew out his black vector, aiming it squarely at Wes.

Wes looked like he was done with all the shit in his lab, he even looked three seconds away from crossing his arms in arrogant petulance. "How about you stow the theatrics then gentlemen and just _tell me _what it's about then? Since you seem to know better than me._"_

"You._ killed_ his brother-" Dean shot a glance to Damon who remained silent. In the brief few moments that Dean had heard him speak he knew it wasn't in the vampire's nature to stay shut up. Damon's eyes were instead darting around the room, in silent calculation, like he was calculating the threats, deciding which one was the best one to take, and would only speak once that decision was reached. "And you're going to pay for that."

"What are you going to do?" Wes snapped. "_Shoot me?"_ He rolled his eyes at seemingly endless amount of arrogance in one small room. "Turn your back on your own race?"

"Don't talk about race like we're on the same side Maxfield," Sam's thunderous voice returned. "We're _nothing _like you! And we're not going to shoot you."

Wes turned to Dean, then to Sam, a look of bafflement on his face, watching as both brothers lowered their weapons off him, but not their eyes. "_That's it_? After all your vampire loyalty openers, you two are really just letting me go?"

"Yeah, _we _are-" Dean cut into the amused, sarcastic rant of the man that had cost one of the two only decent vampires he knew.

The sound of the door squeaking turned Wes around and he watched Sam shut it and locked the steel triple deadbolt in place.

"-Because this retribution isn't ours to give."

Sam's eyes met Dean's over the smell of cloying blood, everything else blurred except the reality of understanding a loss that could swallow oceans.

The solitary vampire in the room listened to the sound of the closing door the finality that it was. Dean lowered his gun at the same moment Sam did, backing away slowly to stand beside Sam.

"I could've done without the hunter theatrics too Wes," A tiny mote of amusement crossed the vampire's face, "But I could've also done with my brothernot _lying out there in a pile of blood!_" Damon's veins filled high into his face. His fangs lowered with a sound like kindling falling into an open flame. He circled Wes, rage in his eyes, amplified a thousand fold.

Wes moved to back away, but Damon was on him in a blur throwing him down hard on the exam table, half of Wes' vertebra broke and snapped, the doctor screamed, and it became louder as Damon ratcheted Wes' head back in a broken angle "This will hurt-" He pried open Wes' eyelids, nails digging into his flesh, drawing his face down millimeters next to his. "_I promise-_" He grabbed a set of scalpels off the exam table and jammed them into Wes' eyes.

Wes screamed and bucked a horrible sounding noise, legs flailing like an animal about to be slaughtered, blood pooling in mass rivers out of his spiked eyes. The noise was ear splitting, but Sam only flinched once, and Dean didn't flinch at all, staring at Maxfield dead on as he was torn and shredded.

Damon reached deep into his ribcage and pulled up and out, Maxfield's heart now clutched in his hand. He let the heart fall out of his fingers to thud and stain the tile in a splotches of bright red; staring down at the very dead Wes Maxfield like he couldn't comprehend what he was looking at now that his end had happened. He turned to Dean in an almost drunken daze, staring at the blade in Dean's hand, an almost lazy amusement on his face.

Dean watched the vampire watching him, and gripped the blade tighter. The look on Damon's face was unhinged, blown to fragments, the face of someone who had nothing left to lose.

"Now that that's done, how about we realign the cosmos?"

Damon blurred around to Dean so fast that Dean's machete blade swung at empty air. He felt the rush wind that came up behind him; he swung in a backwards arch. The blade was caught in the vampire's hand and was pulled up and drawn tight across Dean's shoulders.

"Dean!" Sam ran at Damon, blade raised to strike; but stopped in an abrupt stalemate when Damon bent his arm back and up into Dean's neck, throttling the air out of his lungs.

"You're hunters, I'm a vampire!" Damon squeezed harder like he was juicing an orange. "Let's stop the friend requests and actlike who we're supposed to be-"

"Let him go!" Sam's voice was as large as the room, with enough seismic noise to crack the concrete walls. Dean's neck was firmly in Damon's grasp, there was no way Sam could pull off a move in time that wouldn't end with some part of Dean's body being slit open of a lot of blood.

Damon stared down at Wes dead body splayed out limply on the exam table, chest a massive bloody crater, fingers hanging low beside his congealing heart. "That was right, there's a rhythm to life, a natural order to things!"

Sam heard his brother gasp, choking for air that wouldn't come.

Damon applied more pressure, releasing the machete with a clatter to the floor like he would no longer need it above his own strength. He stared at the last remaining blade gripped by a hunter. "You have three seconds to use that blade before I snap his neck like paper Mache- One-!"

Sam knew that Damon Salvatore was on edge, was a loaded gun in the hand of a crazy person, but everything blew away and apart except for the single image of Dean not being able to breathe; of how there was no line between the moment like this and what Sam would do, there never had been. "Let him go _now!"_

"Twothree-" Damon torqued his hand back.

"_Don't!"_ Sam's voice was thunderous and loud. "Killing people's not going to bring your brother back!" It was a stall, and Sam knew the vampire knew it too, but it wasn't untrue.

Damon's torqued move stalled midway, fingers digging hard into Dean's neck. Sam saw Dean's consciousness a hair's away from caving in; Dean's grip high was on the vampire's arm, fingers trying to create enough of a wedge to keep the pressure off of his neck.

Damon stared at Sam like he'd grown a second head, and a third one for having dared talk about Stefan.

"You didn't want to kill him- But Stefan wanted to come; he _wanted_, to save you!-" Sam kept his machete blade high, voice to the vampire, but his gaze on Dean, who's skin was now an ashen gray. Sam didn't even think, didn't even _bother _thinking about Dean having Vampire blood in his body, and what that meant in a moment like this. All he saw was Dean's life a millimeter from ebbing away, and nothing else mattered. "But if you hurt my brother I'm going to chop your head off-" There was no exclamation at the end of Sam's words, because it was a statement.

"So go ahead," Damon's green eyes stared at him. "_I want _you to kill me, I want you to _plunge that machete _into my heart until comes out the other side! And you want to know _why? –_Because _MY LITTLE BROTHER IS DEAD!-"_ Damon's face shattered apart at the admittance, of saying it out loud. He dropped his arm, and released Dean like a cast off fish back, throwing him so hard onto the floor that he slid across the tile.

"Dean!" Sam ran to where he landed inches beside Wes' corpse. Hey-come here, look at me!-" Sam grabbed Dean's arm and pulled him back, hand instantly going to Dean's throat. "You alright?"

Dean did the same, choking out a mass amount of spit and choking in a mass amount of air.  
Both watched as Damon bent low to the floor, remaining there for a long moment.

Dean reached down by Damon's feet and picked up his fallen machete, Damon made no move to stop him, suicidal or otherwise.

Being thrown to the ground one too many times had loosened a thick trail of blood down Dean's hairline and blinked blood out of his eyes, but didn't wipe it away instead staring at the vampire who had tried to kill him. "Look, you don't trust hunters, and we don't trust vamps, that's the way it ought to be," Dean's voice was rough and reedy. "But I'm telling you the truth when I say I'm sorry about your brother. He saved our lives out there, more than once, he didn't deserve to go down like that-"

Damon reached down by Wes' body and snatched something off the ground: the carved wooden stake made out of oak. He rolled the wood around in his hand like he was testing the weight of it. "I taught Stefan how to whittle when he was 8-years-old." He ran his fingers down where the carved wood slopped up high into a tight, sharp point. "He would've done this _a lot_ better than the late Dr. Maxfield down there-" Damon stepped on the dead fingers of Wes Maxfield, the bones crushing under the soles of his shoes. He flipped the stake around, aiming at the center of his chest.

"Don't do this-" Sam said. "Darius, and _Wes_, your death would let them win_, _and it would waste _both_ your lives!"

"I don't _care _about winning-_" _ Despite the fired, barbed retort Damon's eyes weren't red anymore, or even green, they were growing dull, like a vital part of him had died when his brother did. He looked around the room for the absent thing that he wanted to find, then flicked his eyes back up "I don't care about anything anymore-there's nothing left of my life to waste-" Damon drew the stake past the sharpened point.

The moment for Damon Salvatore to impale himself through the heart was interrupted by the sound of a body hitting solid glass. The back of Elena's head hit the slit of a window in the door, cracking it in a jagged vertical line before her dark hair slid out of sight like a bleeding paint stain.

The sight of the violence seemed to draw Damon back into his surroundings like a rubber band. He pulled the stake back out of his body, throwing it on the ground, moving to the door. He forewent the locks and ripped the door handle off, then the door itself, leaving it to fall backwards like a toppling house of cards.

The first thing Dean smelled when he and Sam ran out into the hallway with Damon was blood.

Elena was thrown back against the stone wall in a tangle of her arms and legs. Her hand was pressed to a gash in her forehead that leaked a heavy trail of blood.

"Elena-" Damon said her voice like was trying to swallow a cloud that melted to vapor in his mouth. He grabbed her free hand and Elena pulled herself up along the wall, releasing the blood on her skin to gravity.

At her feet was even more blood, in a long dragline across the concrete. It bled to a curved trail and up the pant legs of the Alpha Vamp, who was holding Stefan's limp body like a sack of corn meal.

"Let him go!" Elena demanded.

"Your grief misguides you Elena," Darius spoke in almost dulcet tones. "I'm not doing what your thinking-"

"You heard her-," Damon's voice was feral, angry. "Let my brother go Darius or I'll kill you without one grain of humanity inside me!-"

Darius cast a glance to Dean, eyeing him up and down as one might eye the owner of an ill-tempered dog. "You and Sam may have adopted three favorite new _pets_, Dean, but it might do for you to teach them some manners-"

"_Enough!-"_ Dean locked his gun on the Alpha's face. "You son-of-a-bitch-" He drew a bead right on the curved orifice in between Daruis' nasal bones.

"You misunderstand me too, Dean," Darius returned, Stefan's gray, lifeless body in his grasp.

"No see I understand you perfectly," Dean's voice was deadlier than one of the deadliest vampires of all. "You think some, demon hodoo gives you a one up on your own species? Well I'm here to tell you, you're wrong-"

Darius stared at Stefan like he was cast off goods, then blinked back up to Dean without a word, but the vampire's gaze dripped in the phrase '_am I?'_

Damon jumped like a raging pit bull, with a dark, grief torn, manic expression in his eyes, but Darius deflected the attack, slamming Damon into the wall without losing his grip on Stefan's body.

Darius surveyed them all, a wisp of a look came over his face, like things would be more amusing had he had time for them. He set Stefan's body down and dropped his hand low into his open chest cavity, squelching it deep inside the blood.

Sam's click on his gun was audible, echoing. "You started this whole experimental crap, but you don't get to end it!"

"You're right," Darius pulled his hand out dripping with dark black arterial blood. "That's why I'm not." Darius shoved Stefan's heart back through his torn ribcage with an audible cracking.

Damon roared a horrible noise when Stefan's ribcage sang like a broken xylophone.

"You mind your tone Master Damon," Darius returned, before turning to Sam like it was a parent teacher conference meeting, hand inside Stefan's chest cavity. "Tell your hotheaded friend that I will feed him his dead brother's heart if he breaks decorum again-"

"Tell him yourself you dick," Sam snapped. "You gave him enough juice for him to kill you, did you really think it was gonna end any differently?"

Darius had been watching them for a long, long time. But the next look that he gave them all, was like he was seeing them for the first time. "Vampire. Hunter- you're all more alike than you know. You cling to the last remaining pieces of your family so hard that you break them apart and we end up here - As long as the dysfunctional among mine and yours remain so overzealously loyal, we will _always _wind up here- but you already knew that didn't you Sam?" Darius looked down at Stefan's dead body like it was a recently unearthed relic. He ran one yellowed nail across Stefan's now gray skin, His tracing left a pattern of blood across Stefan's sallow kin.

It wasn't an idle tracing, but a pattern, a set of circles and lines going across his forehead.

"What the hell are you doing?" Sam's demand was backed with the aim of his gun and the sharpness of his blade.

The Alpha Vamp continued to draw with fingerprints of Stefan's blood on Stefan's body, ignoring the existence of Sam's weapon and of Sam. "The demon that sired the witch who turned me like to possess her from time to time-"

"What the hell are you talking about?" Elena's voice was a shriek.

"Things your simple mutated mind can't possibly understand girl-"

"You're finger painting in blood on my brother's face, stop _lying _about things and answer her questions!" Damon hissed, seeming to be frozen in place at the shock of Darius maiming his brother's body.

"Demons are very real-Damon, I assure you of that," Darius' dark brown eyes flicked to Sam and Dean like the barbed tongue of a snake. "Just ask your cohort. We all had to come from somewhere, consider yourself lucky that my somewhere was her- she taught me things."

"How about you drop the hard sell demon crap-" Dean snapped. "Don't forget who met and ganked your mommy-"

Darius chucked in a low amusement that cracked liked bone dry kindling. "I assure you Dean, the things that I know that you don't could fill more libraries than exist on this planet._" _ Darius dropped the conversation like a hot pan. He placed a palm over Stefan's forehead started to chant a low sounding series of syllables that sounded like a combination of Sanskrit and Enochian.

Elena stepped forward then backwards on the balls of her feet like invisible strings were controlling her movement like she wanted to attack, but didn't want to cause any more maiming of her dead friend.

The air rose thick with the smell of a rotting decay, as the visible blood stains on Stefan's gray dead skin turned black as volcanic ash. The smell was hot and thick, and blew up Sam and Dean's nostrils like an over powering burn.

Stefan's body jerked like it was being defribulated, flung up and slammed back down in the sticky blood that his death had created.

"_STOP!"_ Damon's cry reached out with piercing fingers and choked the air tightly.

Darius didn't let up from his chanting, and pressed his head harder into Stefan's forehead; his body jerked again, this time like he was still living and in the throes of a seizure.

"_Dean!" _Sam tossed Dean a silver flask with a hammered metal cross on its surface. Dean caught it and doused his knife blade it with holy water, then squirted a crimson line of blood from the syringe in his pocket. He aimed a throw with the blade, curving it high, catching the back of Darius as he turned to meet the blade.

The knife sunk deep below the Alpha's shoulder with a hiss of contact that melted the flesh. Darius reared back in a roar, turning to face Dean's stone faced look. "You're too late – it's done."

The air seemed to ignite in anticipation of what was about to be born.

This time when Stefan's body lurched, it was on a gasp, propelling him upwards in a terrible sound, but one that drew _breath._

"Stefan?" Elena fell to her knees beside him

His eyes snapped open, going from a milky white to a shock of green in the depths of gray skin.

Elena drew back in a shock, Damon remained still, like what he saw could not be described, nor comprehended.

Stefan continued to gasp, lurching like a landed fish, his skin did not lighten at all from its dark gray shade of death, and a spray of black blood flew out of his mouth.

Sam stared at what looked like nothing but a reanimated corpse. "What the hell did you do?"

"Give it time," Darius spoke like he was at a lectern. "It's a blood spell." one hand grasped his wounded shoulder. "Similar to that old legend of a vampire being revived by the blood of his killer, only this one is real." Darius's eyes flicked over to Damon. _"You're _his killer Damon, but your blood _is_ his blood, so it was all I needed."

Stefan lurched up like no amount of air would ever be enough to fill his lungs, his hands shook violently over the shredded hole in his chest.

"It's okay-" Elena pressed both hands over his torn chest cavity, "It's okay-" Elena tore her eyes up to Damon not believing what she was saying.

"What the hell kind of masochistic jerk off are you getting out of this?" Dean saw how Stefan still looked dead, like someone who had their heart ripped out of their chest, flailing in agony, half alive, half gone. "If you have the juice to bring him back, _bring him back, _or just kill him!"

"I've brought him back, you simpering ape," Darius returned slowly and syrupy. "The spell is 1200 years old, and I'm neither witch nor demon, therefore. It. takes. _Time."_

"_Elena,"_ Stefan's voice was weaker than thin air, blown out between bouts of trying to breathe, blood spraying Elena's face in a pattern of red dots.

"You best tend to your brother before your respite is up Damon," Darius said to Damon. "It won't be a very long break."

Damon watched Elena haul Stefan to his feet like he was a collection of tent poles, the toes of Stefan's shoes scraped the ground, he didn't support his own weight at al. He made no move to touch him, but still stood by him protectively.

"You've finally fully fed Damon," Darius said. "You won't crave vampire blood for a full day, it gives you time to make your choices. – Me as well. I see now that Wes was a poor, delusional choice to run this place-"

"Nice timing with the break through," Damon retorted.

"He was nothing like Abilene- you remember Adeline don't you? Charming, charismatic? Ostracized by the town because she refused to marry again after her first husband abused her and she had to lie to cover the real events of his death. She was not unlike myself." An almost wistful looking smile crossed across Darius features. "The night before I was _'killed'_- she asked me to turn her, she knew what I was from the beginning Damon. She accepted it, she _welcomed_ it.-"

"So you were Romeo and Juliet with Monsters?" Dean cut in. "Let me guess?-After you faked your death you never saw her again for a love bite did you?"

Darius eyes flicked from wistful to cold. "I loved her - She was long my original choice for a partner in this remarkable project. But by the time I was through killing my capturers, her idiot of a sister carted her away to Kentucky to _purify _her of her sins with me. By the time I reached her she had died from distemper caught on the journey. And her sister, shedied from _me." _

Dean had heard enough monster monologues to know when one was coming to a point. And given what the Darius was, the first created, by his own hand, vampire of his species – the point was going to be far from arbitrary.

"The Augustine project is a failure," Darius glossed a look over Damon like he was a broken down car he was unable to fix. "It will need to be eradicated."

A series of rumbled noises shook the floor like an earthquake, pieces of concrete that had been knocked loose from the earlier melee between Stefan and his brother jumped like erratic heartbeats.

The hallway they stood in was narrow, like the hallways of an overcrowded high school, but long, both visual ends dissolving into shadow and rock. The shadow at the end of the hallway on the right errupted into hissing that echoed endlessly. The black shadows took on the shapes of a throng of vampires, 20 thick, moving like one body.

The hissing sound echoed again from behind them, and another thicket of vampires equal in number to the first came unglued from the darkness, moving towards them.

"Oh you gotta be _kidding _me!-"Dean hated being right.

"I told you this would not be easy," Darius gaze over them was like warm honey being scorched over open flame.

Sam's eyes moved between heartbeats to both sets of vampires, one of the faces from the stables emerged, her murderous eyes lost in the menagerie of murderous eyes.

"My blood is the only thing that can cure Damon of his rabidness towards his own family," Darius eyes moved to Sam and Dean like weaving thread. "But as the Winchesters already know, I do not bleed easily."

Elena's eyes moved to Darius, then to Sam's who watched her back, her shoulders bowing under the weight of Stefan's dragging form.

"But I'm inclined to deal-"

Dean's gripped the handle of his machete fingers tearing into the worn groves of the leather and wood handle.

"Survive this," Darius blinked, then shifted his gaze to encompass both sets of vampires closed in on them all like a vice about to be activated. "And I'll grant your pardon. Don't, and- you don't."

Darius turned to his right and the troop of vampires eroded to let him pass, then just as quickly closed again like sand falling into a hole.

"_Elena," _Stefan said Elena's name again, his voice like rocks tumbling into marbles. "_Damon-" _His head dropped to his chin like the weight of it was too heavy for him to lift.

Damon came alive at the sound of Stefan calling his name. "Hey!" he jerked Stefan's chin back up. "Now's really crappy timing to fall asleep Brother."

Stefan's eyes were open, but barely, his skin still a light sheen of gray.

The throng of vampires pushed closer, their hissing turning from individual into one massive thing.

Damon turned his eyes to Sam and Dean. "New plan. The status quo is null and void until the body count is high, and not made of me, Elena, or my brother – and you two, I guess."

"Then you might want to shut up and get started." Dean snapped, watching as the vampires on either side moved slowly forward, in narrow formation like an advancing first Legion. He gripped hard to the blade of his last remaining blade, the other hand tight on the trigger of his gun. The latter couldn't kill vampires, but he planned to damn well try to give it a chance too.

Sam closed in on Dean's back, blade out, raised inches above his own gun, like a bayonet.

Elena's dark hair darted this way and that over the sea of fanged faces, her arms gripped tightly to Stefan to hold him up.

Dean raised his blade out, "Come on-"

The sound of fangs lowering crackled all around them.

Damon turned and moved, back to his brother, the same way Sam was to Dean.

Dean stared down the closet vamp, a brunette with a thicket of curls, fangs full extended and bared at him. _"Come on!"_

She leapt at his throat.


	13. Chapter 13

**CHAPTER THIRTEEN**

"_Screw destiny, right in the face. I say we bring the fight to them and we do it are way."_

~"Dean Winchester"

"Supernatural" Episode: "Point of No Return"

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

There were explosions, and then there were the sounds of a mass of vampires breaking apart an industrial landscape.

The vampires ran without flair, instead with a murderous fuel that was a million times more deadly.

The brunette met Dean's blade midway through her neck, and he wrenched it out sideways cutting her head off in a jagged tear, the Dead Man's Blood on the knife ending her before the blade did.

It was the act that signaled the start of hell.

The other vamps tore into the throng of vampires and hunters like a carcass of meat. One of them leapt down from the ceiling and onto Elena's back, tearing into her flesh. She screamed, and a second later dropped forward as the weight of the body fell off of her.

Sam pulled the head of the dead vamp off of Elena, its fangs still embedded in her skin. "Move!" He pushed her and Stefan sideways.

Sam was slammed hard to the ground, a vamp snapping above him like a rabid dog. He held the vamps neck up with his knife trying to push the blade into his flesh, but the vampire kept moving, venom leaking out of its mouth and onto Sam where it burned his skin like acid. He reached out his hand for the gun that had fallen away when he was thrown. His fingers closed around the Tarus and he aimed a headshot the vamp and fired, the bullet tore through the vamp's skull and Sam threw his blade behind the vamp's neck when the kick back from the shot happened, slicing it clean off, toppling the head backwards at his feet.

He flung the headless body off him, Dean grabbing him up by the arm, pulling him upright.

An earsplitting snap echoed as Damon grabbed two of the vamps and broke their necks with simultaneous movements. He was so focused on the fight in front of him that he missed the sight of the vampires leaping up behind him.

But Dean didn't, he drew his gun and fired a rapid fire of rounds at its neck, its head fell on Damon like a rotting melon.

The head toppled down Damon's shoulders, then dropped by his feet, the stump of the neck spraying him with blood. He kicked at the decapitated head into the vampire melee.

The head bumped the mud caked black riders boots of a vampire with fire red hair and eyes that matched. She stared down at the head's dead eyed expression and roared in a rage that shook the earth. She leapt in a hard arc that threw Damon against the wall in full body indentation force, grabbing his throat as pieces of the ceiling fell on him like hail.

"You little piece of _shit!"_

"I've been called worse," Damon said around the need to breathe.

Her eyes grew from murderous to pure death, she shoved her head into his chest.

Damon's body shook in a gasp from the force, his rib bones snapped, he felt her fingers squeezed the blood from his heart. His gasp began to fade away into the choking sound someone made when they were seconds away from not being able to make any more sounds at all.

A brutal ripping sound echoed and reverberated behind him, a sensation totally absent of any increasing pain.

The vampire's face contorted from mid-retribution rage into sudden shock and Stefan emerged from her sideways falling descent, his hand gloved to the wrist in dark blood, fingers curled around her still warm heart.

Stefan's skin gleamed with sweat, his own blood a black stain on his clothes. He grunted something that tried to sound like words, falling forward in a complete vertical slide, the dead heart dropping out of his hand to the ground.

Damon stomped it to a mass of splattered blood, grabbing Stefan's shoulders and jerked him to him back up.

Dean yanked the knife out of the stump of a vampire's neck, and turned around at a yell from Sam to face another vampire mid-attack with two head shot rounds that tore its face apart like a gory explosion.

The vampire's failing body came seconds before Sam plowed his knife into the neck of still another vampire that had descended upon him.

None of them knew how long they fought, time didn't exist, only the sounds of a blade, a ripped heart, and dying screams existed. Damon fought off Vampires one handed, Elena shouldering Stefan's weight long enough for Damon to bite the neck of a vamp clean off, body recoiling in spasms. Blood was everywhere, stained up to the knees of Dean and Sam's pant legs as they shot and sliced their way through countless attacks.

But, even with all that carnage, the fighting did not release its hold. It seemed for every vampire any of them killed, another emerged from the shadowed hallways to take its place, like a swarm of ravenous locusts.

"Go!" Dean yelled behind him to where Damon and Elena were, Elena taking Stefan's weight. Dean aimed another three rounds at the neck of a vampire, cutting her head clean off, her body joining the grave at their feet. "Get him out of here!"

"You can't do this on your own!" Elena shouted at Dean over the noise of the dying vampires.

"_I said go!"_ Dean turned to face her moments after dodging an attack to the neck.

**["**_Damon came this way, I know it-"_

"_Then let's go," _

_Dean and Elena took off in a run down the hallway, but only made it three seconds away before Dean grabbed Elena's arm, halting her._

"_What is it?" she asked._

_Dean looked up to the ceiling, when a Grow Bulb had loudly started to hum like a fire cracker, orange sparks flew from the long bulb as it went out, casting a small part of the hallway into shadow. But that wasn't what he was looking at. The ceiling in this part of the hallway slopped upward with a wooden support beam, creating a gap in between the burnt out grow bulb and the next lit one in the line. Nestled in in that gap stood a large perforated old railway lantern. Dean looked around the cluttered ground, finding a rock the size of his palm, he took a sling shot accurate aim and hurled the stone at the lantern. The iron and glass fell to the ground and shattered loudly._

"_What are you doing?" Elena turned quickly behind her, listening for the sounds of anyone approaching, when none came she turned back to see Dean lift the dented top off the lantern._

_The light was old, rusted at the top, but the ground below where it had smashed was littered with glass and a dampness that Dean put his fingers too, and was met with the pungent smell of newly filled Kerosene. He looked up again and spied a second lantern like the one he had just broke, but this time, he crouched into a jump, and leapt up, his six foot frame just making the clearing to grab at the lantern and pull it down. He opened the top and was met with an almost full container of Kerosene. He pulled an old bandana from his shirt pocket and poured the kerosene over it until it was soaked through._

"_Dig a hole there," Dean pointed to a spot on the ground in the center of all the concrete._

"_What are you doing?" Elena repeated as she tore through the hard packed dirt with her bare hands until it became powdered sand under her fingers._

_Dean crouched down and dropped the bandana into the hole. He removed the clip from his gun and broke apart two of his bullets and sprinkling the gun powder over the fabric. He covered the cloth with a flat piece of stone, splashing the remaining kerosene over the bars, and inside the cells, leaving just enough to make an ignition trail that snaked ten feet away from the cells._

"_After we get your boyfriend out," Dean flattened the hole with his boot, leaving just a peaking of wet rag out visibly connected to the damp kerosene trail. "The next time I tell you to run, you get the hell out, don't ask questions, don't hesitate."__**]**_

Elena was jumped on by another vamp who came down from the ceiling, it was like the hallways were growing them. She screamed as her neck was torn into and Stefan's arm fell off her body.

"Stefan!" Elena grabbed at the vampire as he moved off her body and tore into Stefan's shredded chest.

His scream was horrendous.

She grabbed at the vampire's neck snapping it the moment Damon tore his heart out and flung it aside. The move produced a chain wave reaction and backed up the vampires that were closest to them, like they were realizing that their numbers, while still numerously vast, were diminishing by the second.

Stefan lay in one breathless moment, then shuddered a cough that sounded more like a gasp. "_Damon-" _He coughed out a Roschart Ink test splatter of blood, hand finding the cloth of Damon's torn shirt sleeved shoulder "You have to go!-"

"Already the plan Brother," Damon grabbed Stefan's arm off his shoulder. "Since your rescue attempt is sucking so hard right now," he jerked Stefan to his feet into half fireman's carry stance, lifting his weight off the ground.

"No!" Elena moved her eyes over all the noise and the smell of blood to Sam, then Dean, then Damon. "Damon we can't leave them here!-"

"You know the way!-" Sam brandished his machete to the group of vampires that had gotten bolder again, creeping forward. "You have to lead them out the way we came-"

"You heard him!" Damon shouted to his girlfriend over the hissing sound that had started to pick up again. _"Elena!"_

Elena stared at Sam and Dean like it was the last look that she would ever give them.

Dean's blade found the vamp's neck and he plunged the blade into the pulsating carotid artery, then out again, lopping of her head, blood going everywhere. He raised his eyes to Elena and shouted: "_Run!"_

Elena her expression died on words that she didn't have time to say before the first of the bolder vampires was only a step away from her. She ran in a blur, Sam shooting the hands off the vamps that reached for her, their outraged howls splitting apart the air into complete violence.

Damon eyed Dean and Sam, a look that had no love loss, but wasn't void of emotions entirety. He lifted the weight of his brother up fully and ran at a speed so fast that none of the other vampires were able to grab at anything but moving air.

Dean finally saw that the vampire crowd had an end, but that that end was 20 strong, moving through the dead vampires at their feet.

"_Sam!"_ Dean's warning reached Sam's ears seconds before the vampires came unglued from their shock and turned to them, not roaring, but _screaming_, horribly, as they leapt for blood.

Sam withdrew his gun and shot down one of them as he leapt at his throat, having no time to recover before he shot three rounds in the next one, dropping her jerking to the ground. He fired again, and again until his gun ran out of bullets, the vampires not dead at his feet, but only stunned.

They reached and tore at Sam's pants with tearing hands, but Dean ripped their heads off with his knife.

The screaming ended into a blood filled silence.

"Did we get them all?" Even as Sam asked this in breathes he couldn't find, he felt the falseness of the quiet, like he was stepping on a pressured trigger sensor and about to step off again.

No new screaming came, but there came an echoing scrapping noise from the other side of the concrete wall.

Dean turned, Sam turned, both of them listening to the noise moved down the wall like it was trying to find them.

"That means a definite no-" Dean handed Sam his spare clip. "Come on!"

Sam reloaded in a single second and ran over the pile of dead and stunned vamps, and back to the halls of empty cells that reeked of blood and stale air.

"Wait-!" Sam grasped Dean's shoulder and he halted. They were in a junction where a hallway split like a dividing maze, each direction equally dark.

"What, what?" Dean barked watching as Sam stared at the pathway to the right.

"You go, there's something I have to do-"

"Sam-"

"Go! I'll catch up to you-"

"We don't have time for this man! I soaked half those hallways in kerosene, I'm torching this place down-"

"Give me 5 minutes before you light the fuse-"

"_Sammy-"_

"Five minutes and I'll meet you outside!"

Dean smelled the faint odor of kerosene, the noise from behind the wall now seemed to come from directly behind them, only yards away. "Five minutes and I find you, drag your ass out of here!"

Sam gave a nod, Dean slapped him on the shoulder before they split apart, each taking a different hallway, Sam to the right and Dean to the left.

Dean ran down the hallway, machete raised and gun drawn over it the entire time, more empty cells came at him like monsters until he reached the spot in the hallway littered with glass shards, the odor of kerosene reaching its apex.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Sam navigated through sensory memory back through the darkened hallways until he came to a cell door slivered open in the rock, he pushed it open with a thick screech and stepped inside.

The bed frame had been righted in a wobbled slant on three legs, Marissa's body lay on the exposed springs on her back, skin gray, white dress stiff with drying blood. Darius sat on the edge of the box spring, one of Marissa's hands grasped in his.

"I knew you'd come back here Sam."

Sam cocked his gun. "Get the hell away from her!"

Darius stroked Marissa's hair with his long, curved, yellowed nails. "You were the one that brought her here."

"I said get back!" Sam's roared.

Darius hand moved down to the skin of her face. "I could have turned her into one of us; instead you brought her here for _food_," He made a clucking _tsking_ noise in his throat, tracing the curve of Marissa's cheek with his nails. "Such a waste - Her fate was sealed the moment she met you Sam." Darius dark eyes raised up to Sam, his curved nails still on Marissa's face. "What can you do now that it's too late?"

"It's not too late, until _I say it is!" _ Sam stepped closer and closer to Darius with the gun with with each word, his last movement with the gun used as a cover until he raised up his machete blade. "Give me the ring."

**xxxxXxxxx**

Dean glanced down at his wrist, watching as five minutes came and went around the watch face. He looked up and down the direction he had just run from, seeing nothing but shadow. "Son-of-a-bitch!" He flipped his phone open, but no bars were visible at all. "Damnit Sammy!" He slammed the phone shut, and gripped his zippo lighter inside his jacket pocket and waited for the empty hallway to not be empty anymore.

The sound of footsteps that were to light to be Sam's made him lose his grip on his lighter and find his grip on his knife.

A solitary vampire stood behind him, a short cropped blonde in nearly all leather. She watched Dean with amusement like she was imaging him already dead at her feet. "Guess I missed the show."

**xxxxxXxxxx**

"I take it Damon has survived then." Darius said this not angry, but like it was a fact that was spoke in a gentlemen's club over brandy and the haze of cigar smoke. He reached into the pocket of his leather jacket and produced the sliver ring with the blue lapis lazuli setting, holding it up in between his fingers.

Sam raised his machete in striking mode. "Set it down on the bed."

Darius did what he asked, an impressed smile on his face.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

Dean aimed his machete out at the vampire. "Well you're here now bitch, so that's what counts."

The vampire half glared, half laughed at him. "What is it with Winchesters and smart mouths?"

"It's a family trait," Dean kept the knife where it was, and reached around with his gun, raising it up behind his back and out into the open air. "Kinda like how death is yours."

Her smile turned jagged, and she cocked her head at him like he was an amusing sort of thing. "Is that what you think?"

"No that's what I _know,"_ Dean countered.

**xxxxXxxx**

Sam picked up the ring, the silver cold was against his fingers and smudged in dried red fingerprints. "Now your blood."

"And what makes you believe I would keep my word with hunters who mutilated and maimed dozens of my kind?" Darius ghosted his eyes over the blood that patterned Sam's pants in a tye-dye of red.

"I don't." Sam returned, machete bared. "But if you don't hold up your end it's not your word you're going to have to worry about keeping."

"I am an Alpha boy-" Darius said.

"You're still a vampire, and you can still die like one." Sam's voice had become a growl, something angry emerging from a barrage of adrenaline, of a need to end things before it ended him. He bared the machete blade out like it was attached to him as a barred claw. "You bleed, or I _make_ you bleed-"

**xxxxXxxxx**

"Speaking of family," The vamp backed up and circled Dean like she had all the time in the world, her boots cracking and crunching through the concrete. "Where's your Jolly Green Giant of a brother?_ Probably _nothing but leftovers for my friends-"

"Keep talking scank, and I'll make sure your trip to Purgatory is painful, just like I did with them."

The vamp laughed. "Haven't you heard? Purgatory's a revolving door thanks to you. You might want to try a scarier threat."Her fangs crinkled and retracted, she lunged.

Dean swung his blade at her, swiping up, then down, slashing a jagged gash through her shirt. "How's that one for you?"

She looked down and plucked at the stain of blood leaking through the fabric of her gray shirt. "That's going to stain-" she leapt at him again, grabbing at his arm to reach his neck.

Dean deflected the attack, shooting her in one shoulder, then the other. It wasn't a kill shot, but it wasn't planned to be. Dean watched her back up until she was directly over the covered hole, her riding boots displacing the concrete dust at her feet.

Dean sank his hand back into his jacket pocket and came up empty, fingers closing on nothing but the soft lining.

The vamp held up his zippo lighter. "Is this what you're looking for?"

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

Darrius raised his hand to the blade but didn't touch it, instead he removed a syringe from his jacket and plunged it into the underside of his wrist, dark blood flowing upwards into the tick marked plastic. "I am not doing this for reasons of humanity. I simply cannot stand to have a living mistake of my failures walking around." He withdrew the needle and placed it on the bed beside Marissa's body, so that Sam would have to retrieve it. "In reality I shouldn't even let Damon _live." _

Sam knew a trap layout when he saw it, in order to pick up the syringe, he would have to drop either his gun or his machete, leaving him vulnerable. But if he wanted all that he came for, he would have to take the risk. He lowered his gun, choosing to keep the machete blade out, drawing close to Darius, never once taking his eyes off of him as he reached out with slow deliberate movements to the syringe. His fingers closed around the plastic.

Darius fingers closed on his wrist, bending it backwards. He slammed a curved nailed hand into Sam's face flipping him backwards hard onto the concrete, his face slashed with long jagged claw marks.

Darius rose from the bed and stared down at Sam "Which is why I'm not doing this at all." He stepped over Sam's form and out of the cell, locking it behind him.

**xxxxxXxxx**

"I could smell the Kerosene yards away, Dean." The vamp stared at him in full on accusation. "Not trying to burn me alive are you?"

"Not trying too," Dean reached back into his pocket and pulled out a match, striking it against the concrete with a fizzed popping sound "Gonna."

The vampire eyed the flickering orange flame at the end of the match stick. "Burning vampires only works on that hybrid trash."

"If that were true then you wouldn't be telling me that," Dean called her out on her bluff.

She stared at him hard, but she didn't call him a liar. "How about your new vampire hybrid besties? You forgot about them being invited to the barbeque?"

"Oh they're long gone by now bitch," Dean's voice was a feral thing. "So how about you quick with the half assed stalls?"

"How about _Sam?_" She stared down at him like she towered over him instead of the opposite way around, casting an appraised look over him like his plans were something that were seen visually. "You pretend to be bunk buddies with those abominations of vampires in order to use them to find this place; that I get. But burning your baby brother extra crispy? I doubt Sam would like that."

A dry laugh forced its way out of Dean's mouth, nothing about where he stood was amusing; but he stood right at that moment he in-between toeing the edge of a cliff face and falling into abyss, so _everything _ seemed amusing. "You know your problem besides the monster thing and the jacked up dental work? - Thinking you know my brother better than me-" Dean threw the lit match at the vampire's feet.

The kerosene ignited in a glow of hot orange, crawling up the vampire's pant legs. She screamed as the flame found the rest of the kerosene and the gun powder from the bullets that rocked a mini explosion that threw Dean off his feet into a line of fire and smoke.


	14. Chapter 14

**CHAPTER FOURTEEN**

"_I have given my word that only death will take me from you." _

~Philippa Gregory_  
_

**xxxxxxXxxxxx**

Elena ran at full vampire speed where everything she passed bled together into one large singular object. And she kept running like this as seconds passed into minutes, the warm stale air burning up her nose. After five such minutes passed she slowed to a stop at a point in the hallway. The walls had turned back from solid concrete to stacked brown river stones.

Damon stopped when Elena stopped. "What is it?" He had taken to carrying Stefan fully, his brother's heavy off breathing echoed off the walls.

The stop in movement was so sudden that Stefan's clawed midway in Damon's tattered shirt for support like he used to do when he had first learned how to walk on the warm oak floorboards of his nursery floor.

They had reached a junction in that split the hallway into a T divide. Elena flicked her head back and forth in all three directions like a butterfly trying to escape a spider's web, studying the stone in the darkness, trying to find a pattern that was familiar to her, but everything became blurred under the weight of her adrenaline.

"Which way?" Damon called out to her in a grounding voice and this time her head turned to face him instead of the darkness in the hallways.

The fear of not remembering crept up on Elena like a chill in her body, one that threatened to tear at her throat like the pack of rabid vampires because if she couldn't find the way back, then she had sentenced them all to die.

"_Elena-"_

Elena turned and saw Damon, his eyes crusted with drying blood, puncture wounds visible in bright red punch holes all across the veins in his neck. He was holding onto Stefan who looked barely able to stand, his eyes open but glazed, shirt shredded in what had, only minutes ago, been a lethal wound-

She turned to the junction that branched off to the right, and saw something she hadn't before, a jagged pebble, the same size as the one that she had felt pelt down on her from above as Dean had grabbed her away from the avalanche.

"It's this way!" Elena turned back to Damon and Stefan. "This hallway leads all the way back out to the livery, come on," Elena grabbed at Damon's arm to pull him towards the hallway.

After a few steps, Damon took off in a blurred run again, Elena following seconds behind him.

The wind whipped all around Damon's ears, he felt his wounds pull in protest, the bullet holes in his shirt beginning to bleed freely again, but he kept on, following Elena through the maze of stone that he never wanted to see again, dragging his brother with him.

They ran for a span of five minutes again, the distance covered enormous because of their vampire speed. As they neared a pile of stone Elena recognized from where the cave in had happened, Stefan's weight fell out completely from under him and fell forward, throwing him and Damon down in a sideways slant against the stone. Damon caught himself on his elbows, but Stefan pitched completely against the rock, shaking them loose, burying his arms midway up in jagged stone.

"Stefan!" Elena whirled around and fell by Stefan's fallen figure, shoving away the stone.

Stefan tried to dig his arms out of the stone, each movement slow and painful. "Get out of here-" his chest cavity bleeding freely again.

Damon saw the free flow of blood from Stefan's chest, but there was no pull, no need to devour and drink. There was only the need that had everything to do with a different kind of blood.

Stefan grunted on a fire of pain. "Both of you, go!"

"Stop deciding to be the martyr all the time Brother!" Damon grabbed at Stefan's arm lifted it straight out of the burial of rocks, hearing Stefan's grunt grow into a scream that pierced Damon like a railway spike in his chest. He hauled Stefan back up, Elena on the other side taking Stefan's other shoulder.

The sound of a thundered rumble came from far back in the tunnels, but then blew outward towards them, splitting the ground at their feet.

The ground Elena stood on split apart into a fissure that broke outward with such force that she was flung backwards from the force, rolling and toppling a foot away from Damon and Stefan.

Damon was knocked to ground, arms and legs scraping and tearing through the dirt. Stefan had been flung away from Damon and into the pile of stone, landing in a slant against it, up on his back, head thrown back in a growled pain, eyes squeezed tightly shut.

"Stef!" Damon reached a hand out to grab his brother's arm, shaking it, hearing Stefan groan again.

A cracking fissure started to break through the rock ceiling above; the fissure raced across the ceiling and carved out an enormous chunks of stone right above Elena's head.

"Elena," Damon called out her name in a command to get her to look. She turned her head up, sticky with blood from her fall in time to watch the cracking ends of the stone meet together.

Another cracking sound turned Damon's head up a second piece of rock doing the exact same thing over Stefan, pieces of the tumbled rock avalanche falling around him as the last support to the stone ceiling above at that point began to crumble away.

Both the broken started to fall within seconds of each other.

Damon watched Elena backed away from the rock, trying to find footing in the fissured ground, he heard Stefan groan again beside him, trying to move, but not fast enough.

Damon climbed up to his feet and blurred in a single movement, grabbing up Elena by the wrist, and dropped with her into a crouched roll that yanked Stefan out of the way of the way as both pieces of rock fell hard from the ground, and the rest of the stones followed.

Elena shielded her arms over her head, and pressed herself tight to Damon as Damon stood crouched over Stefan's body, rocks dive bombing them.

It took 20 seconds for the air to clear; and when it did Elena pushed her face out from Damon's chest into a brown haze. She brushed off dust from her second avalanche.

The hallway behind them had sustained a lot of structural damage from whatever had caused the explosion. The created rock wall from the first explosion had crumbled half away revealing what looked like a prison cell, a bedframe held a girl in a tattered white dressed half drowned in blood, and Sam Winchester, flung on his back, a track of red claws carved across his right eye.

"Oh my god-!" Elena climbed up and over what was left of the fallen debris wall.

Damon pulled Stefan to his feet against the opposite wall, Stefan grunting, eyes flickering in pain, but he managed to hold to the stones that had shaken loose, eyes tracking as Elena climbed over the fallen stone, kneeling by Sam's head.

Blood was leaking out of the hunter's wounds, trickling into his eye. "Sam-" Elena shook his broad shoulders, he didn't move. "Sam!"

Sam's eyes flicked open, and his hands instantly went out to strangle what was in front of him, but he drew them back down when he saw Elena's face smeared with sweat and blood in front of him. She grabbed his hand and pulled him into a sitting position.

Sam looked instantly behind him, towards the back end of the tunnel. "Where's Dean-?"

"I don't know," Elena pulled harder to get Sam upright, even with all her strength it was hard to do. "Come on, this place is collapsing, we have to go!-"

Sam grabbed along the wall, which took enough of his weight off of Elena that she was able to help him fully.

"_Dean!"_ Sam's voice tore over the sight of the flames, the image of it reflected in his eyes.

"_Elena!"_

A voice from Elena's left whipped her head around to the sight of Caroline's bright blonde hair running towards her, Bonnie close behind.

"Caroline!" Elena swallowed down the shock at seeing her friend some place where she shouldn't be.

Caroline wore an equally such shocked expression as she took in Elena standing next to a hunter, blood streaked across her face; Damon and Stefan equally bloody beside her.

"Stefan-!" Caroline said his name with such shock that it reverberated, sounding half stunned, half on the verge of tears. "Oh my god-"She ran to him, hugging him over all the blood, Stefan accepting the hug even as he grunted in pain. "You died! We saw you die!" Caroline took in the sight of the hunter, accusation in her expression.

Sam gave her no attention in return. "He said five minutes-" He glanced back down the hallway, like he was waiting for it to reveal his brother.

A trickle of heat crept up on the hallway, the trickle grew more intense like the heat slowly rising with the increase in gas from a furnace. An orange light peaked out from the visible end of the hallway, the outline of flames began to show visibility around the edges of the stone.

Elena turned to the funnel of high heat, growing closer to them, a popping noise was heard, which snapped Caroline's head up as well.

Most of the stones that made up the hallway were brown bricks like the kind in kilns, able to withstand very high temperatures. But the splitting sound came from them. The fire had started to split tiny fissures into them from how hot the flames had become.

Sam turned back to the tumbled down bed and scooped up the dead girl's body, climbing over what was left of the makeshift wall.

Bonnie caught sight of the dead girl, her face going pale, remembering the face of the girl she saw moment's ago. "Oh my god-"

"Take her," Sam held out the girl's lifeless body to Caroline.

"What?" Caroline stared up at the girl's gray body, her skin the same color as a dead vampires'. The comprehension of what must have happened to her evaporated in the way the Hunter held her, like he was still trying to protect her even in death.

"Get her out of here," Sam handed off the body to Caroline so fast that she didn't have time to do anything but grab her.

"Elena!" the shout of her name this time produced Jeremy and Matt, Katherine trailing behind, her shoulder bloody, her eyes a pattern of flames in the light.

Katherine eyed Sam like a threat, Damon as well, before her eyes settled on Stefan and a breathless whisper of his name came from her mouth.

"Go back down this hall as fast as you can!" Sam shot the same look back to Katherine that she had shot at him, but next words encompassed her too. "all of you-"

Elena turned to him. "What are you going to do?"

Sam turned around to the flames that grew close enough to see "I have to find Dean-"

"This place is on fire!" Elena shouted over the flames that grew so bright that the lit the hall in a glow of orange, popping and melting the Grow Bulbs above

"I'm not leaving my brother back there!" Sam shouted back over her. He stepped back into the rubble of a room once more, digging through fallen stones frantically. He pushed aside one large flat piece of fallen rock, closing his hand two on objects. He ran back over the rubble, what he held glowed in the light of the flames: Damon's daylight ring, and a syringe filled to the five millimeter mark with blood.

He pushed both of them to Elena. "_Go!" _

Sam waited only until she closed her hand around them then ran headlong back down the hallway.

"Sam!" Elena shouted after him, watching as he moved past a crumbled piece of smoldering stone, the orange light swallowing him.

The flames leapt higher like it had received a sacrifice. Caroline and Bonnie's heads raised to the flames, hot orange fingers of light now only yards away from them.

"We have to get out of here!" Jeremy shouted. The flames shadows crawled up his t-shirt damp with sweat.

Smoke began to billow out from the glowing hallway like a black cloud, rising clear up to the low ceilings.

"Elena!" Jeremey yelled for her.

Elena stared where Sam had gone, the hallway wasn't even visible anymore, there was nothing left to see but orange and black. "I'm going back!"

"Are you crazy?!" Damon shouted at her. "The fire will kill you!"

"I can't leave them there!" Elena shouted back to him, the smoke blew past them, almost as hot as the flames.

"You saved them once already!" Damon shouted. "You don't owe them anything else!"

"I'm not going to let them die Damon!" Elena shouted back. "They saved me, and Stefan, and _you!" _She looked over to all of them, even Katherine. "Get out, I'll meet you at the front!"

"How is death _ever_ good plan?" Kathrine retorted.

Damon glared at Katherine in a heat that was equal and above the fire that closed another foot of the gap between it and them. He then turned to Caroline, holding the body of the girl Wes had turned, that he had fed on in his cell. He reached over and grabbed her out of Caroline's grasp and shoved her into Kathrine's

"What the hell?" Katherine jerked to catch the girl's body before she dropped her.

Damon turned to Caroline who still stood near Stefan. His brother was holding to the wall like it had taken the structural supportive place of his skeleton.

Damon pulled Stefan off the wall and shoved him into Caroline, staring her down like he was deciding if she was worthy of what he was about to ask. "Get him out of here!"

"_What?"_ Caroline retorted, catching Stefan's heavier weight, righting him with her body before he fell over.

"Take the hallway all the way down to the livery, then get as far the hell away from here as you can!" Damon glowered at Caroline. "I'm trusting you Blondie, don't make me regret it-"

"Damon don't-!" Stefan's eyes were half open, his voice a rattled, hoarse thing.

Damon stared hard for a moment at Stefan, watching his brown eyes staring back at him. "You better not be dead again by the time I get back." His fingers curled over Stefan's shredded shirt, and through to his shoulder, letting go slowly giving a silent nod to Elena.

"_Damon!"_ Stefan shouted watching as Damon and Elena took off in a run into the orange light.

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

Damon both cursed Elena for being so _stupid _and tried not to lose sight of her in as he followed her back through the tunnels, the fire getting hotter and brighter the further back they went. Elena's hair soon became the only thing he could still see of her in the black smoke and orange flames.

The splitting sounds of the bricks rang like fireworks in Damon's ears as he ran, the smell of burning bricks echoing a moment in his memory when he and Stefan used to sneak down to the livery in Mystical Falls and watched as the blacksmith cast horse shoes. As they ran Damon saw no sight of the hunter, only signs of flames, and heat, and acrid smoke that choked its way up his lungs.

A beam dug high up into a section of the stones was released by the outline of fire surrounding it and fell directly into a diagonal right near Elena.

Damon yelled her name and she ducked back just in time, the fire burning up high from the movement, flaming particles of ember rising up like escaping fireflies into the blackened air.

"_Dean!" _ The voice echoed over the cracking of the flames.

Over the fallen diagonal of stone stood a long hallway lined in rubble, a flaming hole rose up high by the hunter who crouched over his fallen brother. The air smelled of kerosene and blood. The embers from the fallen beam fluttered down to the ground igniting a still wet trail of kerosene, the flames consumed the accelerant and leapt up into the air.

Elena jumped back with a gasp as she felt the heat singe the sleeve of her jacket, the fabric smoked but didn't burn. She glanced over all the flames. A vampire's body was caught in the burning flames, being swallowed by them, fire ran in high lines everywhere, licking up where Dean was struggling to get up to his feet.

The left side of Dean's face was a line of matted blood snaked in between a mass of red blisters. He reached up and out with his hands to grasp the collar of Sam's jacket. "_Sammy-"_

"I got you, c'mon!" Sam lifted Dean up off the ground, draping his arm over his shoulder, pulling him stumbling towards a way that had no exit except flames. Dean's gait was off, like he had been injured more in the last than just his face.

A thundering crack echoed high above them, Elena craned her head up to see the entire wooden support system of the stone roof above where Dean and Sam were devoured completely by flames, Elena heard the wood shredding apart like a million sounds of gunfire.

"Elena!"

Elena heard her name at the same time she heard a heavy grunt and turned in time and saw Damon as pulled up beam that had fallen across the hallway, flames singing up his tattered shirt, getting closer to his skin.

Dam felt the trickle of flames reach his right elbow. "Hurry up!"  
Elena ran to Sam and Dean, taking Dean's other arm under hers and pulling the weight of both brothers through the break in the flames.

Damon raised it up against the side of the stone, the heat traveled red hot up his body but he pulled harder until he dropped the flaming stone to the other side of the hallway, beating out an orange line of fire that caught up his shirt sleeve. He ran fast and grabbed Sam Winchester's arm, shoving its weight under him. "Run-" he told Elena as the sound of the wood cracking above reached its zenith. "_Run!"_

Both vampires blurred at full speed, the hunters supported between them as the roof of fire collapsed inward, all four figures lost to the blaze of orange.

**xxxxxXxxxx**

"Stefan stop it!" Katherine stood over the passageway doors, hands tight on Stefan's shoulders, just barely able to keep him back with the human strength that she now possessed.

"Get out my way-"Stefan's voice was something masticated and spat out on the ground, feral, threatening. "Damon's down there-Get out of my way before I kill you!"

"Then kill me Stefan," Katherine said in the same tone of voice she had introduced to Stefan long ago on the first night she revealed herself to him as what she really was. "Because I'm not letting you _kill_ yourself going back down there-"

The sun had long gone under the blackness of the sky, taking any excuse for shadows with it except the street lights and lanterns that hung over the livery.

The blood drew high to Stefan's still ashen face. Even in the darkness, his eyes went almost blood red, his fangs descended and he roared a thunderous scream. "_Get out of my way!-"_

Katherine stood her ground, dark eyes stoic. "I said _no-"_ Her voice choked off as Stefan shot out and grabbed a hold of her neck.

"Stefan don't!" Matt stepped in front of Stefan, yanking at his fists, trying to pry it off of Katherine's neck who gasped and sputtered.

Stefan's free arm shot out backwards and threw Matt hard to the ground, where he slid and landed hard on the packed dirt.

Caroline ran at Stefan and jerked him backwards, pulling hand off Katherine, Katherine fell to the ground in a gasp.

"Stefan,"_- _She blocked him with her body when he tried to run again at the trap door entrance. "Stefan _stop it!" _Caroline snatched his shoulders. "The tunnel is on _fire!" _Her voice tore into emotions at what that meant. "They'll come out, Elena and Damon-they'll _both _come out!

"Move Caroline!" Stefan screamed at her, he could feel what left of his reserves ebb away to a single thin line a blink away from severing; the adrenaline bore hot and heavy over all his body's screaming that he was finished.

"'No!" Caroline grabbed his shoulders again in 'one, two' tackle when he struggled again to break her hold. "I'm not going to let you die down there!- Damon wouldn't want you to either!"

"_I have to save him!" _ Stefan shouted so loudly that it sent the horses around the livery into a frenzy, whining and rearing in their stalls. "He's _my. BROTHER!" _a wet, black mass of blood coughed its way of Stefan's mouth when he screamed next, spraying Caroline across the face.

Caroline reared in shock, not one of disgust, but of fear. "Stefan-" she grabbed him up when he started to slide.

The ground beneath them shook like an earthquake, taking with it any signs that Stefan's slide was purely an involuntary action from him. From the depths of the opened door a tremendous rush of heat and orange light billowed upwards, the boards of the livery floor began to shake, the horses reared absolute terror in their stalls, knocking against the wooden walls.

"_Damon!"_ Stefan choked on blood as he called his brother's name. He finally broke Caroline's hold and sprinted in a stance that shouldn't have held him up, but did so on raw adrenaline.

Flames began to spring up from the opened trap door.

"Stefan!" Bonnie shouted Stefan's name bathed in all the shock that moment produced. She ran to grab Stefan back, the boards under her feet jumping up, glowing solid orange beneath the cracks.

Stefan jumped over a creeping orange snaking flame, collapsing onto his knees, staring down directly into the heat, blisters popping and trying to heal themselves on his skin. He shoved his hand through the doorway and the flames, hearing Bonnie scream his name again above his own scream as the fire crawled up his arm.

A hand grabbed into his, and he pulled up hard still screaming. Damon emerged out of the orange light just as the doorway to the underground maze began to collapse on itself.

"Come on!" Stefan pulled him up through the flames in one hard swipe, his brother emerging first, then, Elena from the orange glow, dragging the form of Sam and Dean Winchester through the trap door.

Sam turned and snagged Dean by the shirt hauling him up over the burning piece of wood that caught on his boot.

"Elena!" Jeremy reached out over the orange void and grabbed his sister's hand pulling her hard away from the falling floorboards, grabbing Bonnie back with his free hand.

Stefan pulled Damon back out of the flames, dragging the hunters back with his movements. Caroline snatched the dead body of the vampire up where Katherine had laid her before the falling floorboards claimed the girl.

The floorboards turned molten hot and began to flip backwards from the heat, then collapsed down falling into the fiery tunnel.

Matt ran sideways through a gap in the flames and around to the other stretch of dirt where the horses whinnied and cried in fear behind their stable doors. He unlocked the latches on the door, screaming at the animals to run, which then did in a thundering gallop out into the town's streets.

Katherine wobbled on floorboards like she was on a wave, arms thrown forward then backwards leaping over a chasm in the floor that glowed orange light like hell only to have the floor in front of her swallowed into fire.

Matt heard her scream as the fire caught on her boot, and she tried to kick it away. He ran back though the gap across the floor flaming floor as far as he could to the flaming hole. "Katherine!-" He craned his hand over the hole. "Katherine _grab my hand_!" He saw just a moment of fear in Katherine Pierce's eyes, half believing that he would drop her to her death, half pure fear of the flames themselves. "I got you-jump!"

Katherine stared at Matt over the heat and the fire and leapt, Matt snatched her hand in midair yanking her sideways and dragging her into a broken run over the flames and out onto the street.

They panted and gasped as one unit on the street, feeling the heat racing up their backs.

Sam turned to see the flames crawl over the dirt, finding fallen tree branches as tinder, snapping them up, moving further until it crawled in a direct path to the old white Lincoln.

Caroline and Damon turned around the same noise. the fire rapidly closing the distance between the ground and the gas tank of the car.

"Caroline-" Damon's voice a bullet about to be ejected from gun "You need to run-," the fire found the back tire of the car. Damon reversed the hold Stefan had on him, so that he grabbed his brother by the front of the collar. "Now!"

Sam did the same for Dean, pulling him back. Dean seemed to come out somewhat from his daze and found his own footing pulling back in almost perfect synchronization with Sam.

"Go," Dean's voice was thunderous. "_Go, GO!"_ His boots broke apart the street as he ran at the end, shoving Sam forward hard in between his shoulder blades.

The fire jumped to its last destination.

Damon turned at the sound of the explosion, watching as the fire blew apart the car, throwing a huge fireball into the air like a miniature sun, swallowing the night.


	15. Chapter 15

**CHAPTER FIFTEEN**

"_You love me. Real or not real?" _

~"Peeta Mellark" Mockingjay

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

Sam coughed massively, trying to clear everything from his lungs but the air it needed. The sound that he made echoed nine times over in the town square only over powered by the noise of screaming people as they ran from the flaming livery. A clanging copper rang a deep cord into the night, then came the high pitched scream of fire truck's sirens.

Sam's lungs burned from smoke inhalation, the fog of it clinging deep inside his lungs. Before him is a maze of winding road still packed almost to capacity in frightened people trying to flee from danger. He leaned against the wall of a clock tower building, not unlike the one at Mystic Falls. Tourists and residents alike were running in a chaotic scramble, the footsteps of the volunteer fire department thudded heavily on the asphalt and ran away from them, the force of such a disaster rendering them invisible.

Sam turned to the sound of a coughing breath that mirrored his own.

"Dean!" Sam Dean dropped in a crouch against the wall, face a mess of blood. "Dean, hey, hey, you alright?"

"Yeah," Dean didn't look or sound alright, but he pushed himself up against the clapboard wall of the clock building, hand gripping something painful underneath his jacket. "What about you?-"

"I'm good," Sam quickly reassured, his breath still not wanting to believe him because it would not slow down in the darkness.

A ringing came from deep within the folds of Sam's smoked and singed jacket He pulled out his phone, cracked and coated in dust but still functioning -to an unlisted number.

"_You're alive." _Darius' voice came surprised the other line. _"You've surpassed my expectations of you again, Sam"."_

Sam's face screwed tight like it was being tightened with _actual_ screws. He drew his eyes into the night, over the crowds moving, the sirens.

Dean looking over in the same direction Sam was, seeing nothing, he pulled the phone down from Sam's ear and switched it to speaker.

"_You won't find me; I've already moved away from that embarrassment._"

"You fucking, _coward!"_ Sam shout tumbled into a growl into the phone.

"_I'm a realist Sam, I know when to stop questioning my losses and cash in my wins- and I suggest you do the same-"_

Sam turned back around and saw Elena plunge the needle filled with Darius' blood into Damon's neck, drawing the plunger all the way down.

The reaction came hard and fast -Damon reared into a spasm like the blood was burning its way through his body, mouth set open in a silent scream

"Damon!" Elena dropped the needle in horror and grabbed his neck in her hands. "Damon!"

Damon shook against her Elena like he was seizing, hands contracting into coiled fists that broke apart the ground. "No, come on, please!-" Elena begged, turning up with half a sob to Bonnie. "Bonnie, please- you have to do something!"

Sam had no idea what kind of supernatural being Bonnie was, or if she was any at all, Elena's plea more like the desperate cry of a friend begging for help even if was an impossible task.

"I can't, Elena," Bonnie's eyes went wide at the sight of Damon jerking in violent shudders. "I don't have magic anymore-"

"_Damon-" _ Stefan's words proceeded a guttural moan from where he was against the wall in a heap legs splayed out in front of him like broken match sticks. He flipped sideways hand reaching out to grab Damon's spasming body. He turned to the other brunette as well. "Bonnie, _please!"_

It seemed like it was Stefan's cry to Bonnie that was her undoing, "I'm sorry-" She sounded like she failed, the tears she had spilled past her lashes.

"Listen to me you blood fanged masochistic dick!-" Dean growled into the phone over the noises of torture at his feet. "Playtime's over-!"

"_I'm at the West Lodge and Travel Inn ten miles outside of town Dean, drinking in the local color-"_

Darius cut Dean off just as Damon's seizure like spasm ended just a soon as it started and he fell back in sweat soaked agony; Elena saying his name. Stefan grasping his shoulder, calling to him, yanking him back up into a sitting position, Damon's head bowed practically in Elena's lap.

"_I depart in 15 minutes, if you really want to find me that badly-"_

Stefan's grunt ripped Sam and Dean's head back around where they watched Stefan's grip fall away from Damon as he dropped hard to the ground on his face in a groaned scream.

"_But it doesn't sound like Stefan is doing as well as I had hoped-"_

"Stefan!" Elena's scream was torn anew to the younger Salvatore.

"_Blood spells can be fickle things-so hard to do correctly under duress. Sometimes you miss some things-"_

"_Stefan," _Damon pulled himself up off of Elena and fell beside his brother.

"You son-of-a-bitch!" Dean yelled into the phone.

"_You have two options gentlemen. Which loss and which win is more important?" _

"_Stefan!" _The wound at Stefan's chest was wide and still open, and his heart beat visibly through the gap. Damon pulled his hands over the torn flesh and physically held it closed.

The smile Darius gave was felt over the phone _"Make your decision." _The call disconnected.

"_Stefan,"_ Elena screamed his name again, reaching out to grab his neck. He was awake but barely, head lolling in Elena's hands. "No, Stefan, c'mon, stay with us, please!-"

Dean threw Sam's phone to the concrete, the display cracked completely in a shattered diagonal line.

"Dean- hey-" Sam grabbed Dean's shoulder as he spied the silhouetted frame of the Impala parked only a block away on a side street, glowing in the light of the fire.

Dean turned and saw what Sam saw. Over the sounds of Stefan's agonizing yells Dean stared down everyone that wasn't Sam. "Whoever the hell stole my damn car, give me my fucking keys. _now!" _He held out his hands like it was a loaded gun, waiting only three seconds before Jeremy Gilbert reached out and held out the set of Master Keys.

There was a lethal look that Dean didn't have the chance to fully unload on Jeremy before he grabbed his keys and ran towards his car.

Sam didn't follow.

Instead he watched Dean's back the entire time he ran down into the night towards the Impala. Crowds of the town citizens moved away in groups either to or away from the flames, but not came towards Dean as he reached the car and flipped open the trunk, snatching the weapons duffel out, and ran back towards them.

Dean dropped the green bag onto the ground next to Stefan's right side and snatched out the Field Suture Kit.

"Get a grip on his heart," Dean demanded of Damon. He unrolled the field kit roll, pulling out a hooked suture needle at the end of a long waxed monosuture filament. He knotted one end of it, reaching into the duffle for a sheathed hunter's knife, throwing it high and over to Sam, who caught the blade and ripped it out of the moleskin sheath.

"When I say, push it back in," Dean hovered his hands over Stefan's torn chest. "And _keep _it there until I tell you to let go!-"

Damon had proved that he could kill Dean without hesitation when provoked. But this time he did what Dean said, moving the visible part of Stefan's heart up into his chest cavity with his bare hand. Dean pulledthe needle through the visible jagged end of torn skin. Stefan struggled at the pain the movement produced, rearing up into a scream that shredded the air to pieces, jerking hard, pulling the suture needle out of Dean's hand.

"What are you doing?!" Caroline Forbes screamed.

Dean had no time to placate her. "Hold him down-!" He grabbed the needle moving the needle again into the torn pieces of Stefan's skin. Stefan bucked higher, screaming.

Damon pinned his down his legs on his. Elena grabbed Stefan's arms, holding them down.

Dean continued to pull the needle and thread into Stefan's skin, in quick in and out motions.

Stefan's scream rose higher in pitch, then dropped off in pants. "Stop it, please-" He growled in agony. "_Stop!"_

Elena's long hair draped over his face like a curtain, not reaching out to comfort him because it would release her hold. "It's alright- Stefan, it's alright!"

Damon was clenching his teeth, pinning his brother down, not saying anything as Dean wound two more suture lines in and through the torn flesh. But as the next scream came from Stefan, so did Damon's:

"_Hurry up!"_

Dean created one last until it met where Damon had his hand in Stefan's chest.

Sam was crouched on ground across on Stefan's right side, grasping the 4 inch hunter's blade that now was red hot from the flame of his lighter. "Let go, _let go!"_

The squelching sound came as Damon removed his hand from Stefan's chest, as soon as Damon's hand was clear, Sam grabbed at the hand length gap that was left open on Stefan's skin, holding the flesh tightly. Dean sutured twice more and moved back at the same time Sam placed the flat of the blade against the wound.

A steaming hiss rose and Stefan screamed one last time, high and animalistic, then he dropped, in a barely conscious state.

"_Stefan?" _ Caroline's voice rang like a struck bell, Elena repeating the same name, her fingers deep in the sweat soaked skin of Stefan's neck. The others moved forward, waiting, none of them daring to breathe.

The only sound of breathing came from on the ground, echoed hard around the circle of vampire brothers and hunter brothers.

Damon stared up at Sam and Dean, his hand a glove of Stefan's blood, more of the same drying on his body.

"Damon-" Stefan's voice was half a whisper, carried into the acrid smell of smoke and blackness.

Damon turned that gaze down from Sam and Dean towards Stefan himself.

"I'm sorry," his voice shook weak, but full of something heavy, the sound of guilt. "I should've looked for you-"

Damon stared at down at the sound of Stefan's voice like it was the first time he had ever heard it. He shoved Elena's hands out of the way and ripped Stefan up in one hard movement, throwing his arms up and around him. Stefan returned the action, arms going high into a clawing fashion up against his brother.

The pull of breath that came from Dean was echoed by his own brother, the knife still in his grip in the air that smelled of ash.


	16. Chapter 16

**CHAPTER SIXTEEN**

"_The ghosts are crawling on our skin  
We may race and we may run  
We'll not undo what has been done."_

~David Gray **"Meet Me on the Other Side."**

**xxxxxXxxxxx**

The sky had lightened into gray around the edges of morning that began to take over the blackness and the stars. The small clearing on the river that hugged the left side of the town was carpeted with small yellow daisies and dandelion puffs that wavered in the warm breeze.

The emerging lines of daylight caught the glint off the polished wooden handle of the Army knife Sam produced from the folds of his pocket.

Damon eyed the weapon. "Gonna slice my head off with that?" The remark was carried up and over the air from where the Vampires stood in a patch where the grass was thick and flattened under the weight of Damon's boots and under the weight of Stefan's body. The younger vampire sat in a kneeled position, arms drawn up and around his knees, head bowed just enough to know that he was alive, but had suffered to make sure it was so.

Sam flicked the blade open, Stefan's head raised up to the noise. Sam moved the blade to his hand that bore a barely clotted scab on his palm. He moved past that scab and drew the blade vertical across the veins in his wrist. Blood poured out of his skin, he placed a paper cup that had been discarded in the grass underneath his wrist, the blood pattered inside.

The sound of an engine rumbled over the early morning. A dark blue Toyota Highlander rolled over the grass coming to a stop by the Impala parked 5 yards away from where Sam stood.

Dean emerged from the driver's seat of the SUV, walking over to Jeremy Gilbert who was only a handful of steps from him watching Sam.

"Here," Dean tossed Jeremey the keys. "Plates are switched out, enough gas to get you back if you don't tear up the engine."

"Thanks," Jeremy's voice distant, because they hadn't spoken to each other except fpr now.

Dean nodded at him. "Listen kid, I know you were worried about your sister, I get that. But, Magical Hunter or not, if you ever smash and grab my car again I will break every bone in your face. Understand?"

"Yeah," Jeremy's voice became less distant, but with just enough trace of fear that Dean knew he got the point.

Dean moved to where he saw Sam, wrist leaking blood over a dirty paper cup. He drew closer, not making a move to stop him. Instead he took the knife from Sam's grip and slashed it across his own palm, making a fist over the paper cup. His blood fell in mingled drips with Sam's into the bottom of the paper cup. This continued for two full minutes before the cup became just over halfway full. Dean pulled his hand back, then wound a green bandana around Sam's wrist, stemming the blood flow before closing his own hand.

Sam watched the gesture in silence. Dean walked over the grass with the blood sloshing inside the paper cup. He stopped in front of Stefan, who turned his face up at the smell.

Stefan took the cup from Dean with a slow hand, like he didn't trust himself, but at a half eyed look from Damon, a look that Dean saw something that he recognized, the younger vampire pulled a heavy set of swallows, the red vicious blood disappearing down his throat.

Sam walked further over the grass where the dandelions were a thick yellow line, stopping at a pile of wood laid out to form a flatbed crossed in in a teepee like fashion supports. The sound of the grass breaking lightly under foot behind him turned him around.

Caroline Forbes walked a path through the small yellow flowers towards him; Marissa's small bloody body in her arms; the whiteness of the girl's dress radiating brighter than any other part of her. Sam reached out and took Marissa in his arms as carefully as if she were a newborn.

Caroline stepped back, watching Sam as he turned to the wooden funeral pyre and set Marissa down on it. He reached out slowly and shut her eyes with the palm of his hand.

Dean emerged on his left with two small canisters. Sam took them both the salt that fell from the canister sprayed wet in lines of lighter fluid that dampened Marissa's white dress.

Dean reached into his pocket and produced a match, striking it on the rough wood. The flame fizzled and lit up Sam's expression against the backdrop of the lightning sky.

Dean waited a breath, then raised the match in a high pitched throw. The flame dropped and ignited the wood in glowing bright orange, encasing the small body.

Sam watched the fire consume what was left of Marissa Patterson.

"You did what you had too Sammy," Dean turned away from the flames and to his brother. "Living as bait in that hell hole- she's better off this way-"

Sam fought for words that wanted to believe Dean, to try and believe anything that wasn't blinding and tearing at him for what he had done to bring this girl burn on a funeral pyre so far away from her home. But there weren't any, so he swallowed something bitter and crushing, seeing Dean's face reflect the pain he felt.

Elena emerged beside Sam, eyes watching the fire, her smaller hand reached out and slipped into his, fingers curled up against his skin.

Damon emerged from the darkness next with Stefan who walked slowly and painfully, but under his own power, both watched the fire as well, the others watching behind them.

The flames rose high, swallowing the sky and the minutes in time as it burned high into the sky.

"So Eden sank to Grief-" Damon recited quietly, earning him a solitary look from his brother which he seemed to ignore, staring at the fire like it might have been alive at one point, and he had been around when that one point was.

"So what happens now?" Caroline turned to stare at Sam first, then Dean, the look of someone who had known them for only a few seconds, but it was a few seconds enough. "I mean, you _know_ about us-"

"You go home," Sam cut her off. "You stay on alert- Darius doesn't like to let things go, so you need to watch your backs," Sam swept his eyes over the vampires, and the two humans that didn't count against him and Dean.

"What about you?" Elena released Sam's hand and turned to Dean in question.

"We go home too," Dean answered her back, watching the light catch the darkness of her hair. "You keep your peace – and Sam and I will drop your town off the hunter's radar."

Elena watched him back with the battle weary look Dean had seen come through too many after a battle, a degree of knowledge that was learned through blood and death.

"Hate to put a damper on the campfire confessions," Damon's said. "But it's been a long night of death, torture and resurrection, so we should probably _hit the road." _ He thumbed back to the stolen vehicle.

Elena turned back around to face Sam, eyes traveling up to his face "You kept your promise," she flicked her eyes to Dean "both of you-" She reached out to Sam and hugged him, arms reached up as high as they could around him.

Sam held her back, her body warm, smelling of ash and blood.

She stayed for a long moment back and walked to Dean, she took long steps towards him, hugging him too. "Thank you."

Dean drew into the hug without hesitation, one long arm closing across her shoulders, fingers gliding down her hair, just a breath of a kiss against her head before she pulled away.

She moved back to stand by Damon, Caroline's Forbes look on her like 'what the hell?' as she stood by Damon. Elena shot back with a look that fizzled out Caroline's in answer.

"Ugh, I'm gonna throw up now-" Katherine complained into the night, looking around for all the world like the field was an annoying school play that she had been forced to sit through. "Can we go?"

"What's all this _we _stuff?" Damon retorted to the doppelganger, turning to face her fully in the grass. "_We're_ not friends-"

Kathrine scowled. "I saved your _life!"_

"Stefan saved my life," Damon returned, sharing half a glance at his brother, one that his brother returned. "Elena saved my life, so did the _Vampire_ _Hunters,_ even the law firm of _Forbes, Donovan and Gilbert _and the saved my life. You weren't even a good filler story-"

"Damon."

Stefan's voice rose over the air, and Sam watched as Damon's mouth closed, words cut off, as the vampire stared at Kathrine, skin reeking of sweat, blood all over her shoulder.

"Fine," Damon's eyes went wide and unblinking at his brother like he was agreeing to something he hated. "But she rides strapped to the hood." He turned away from Katherine's death look.

Damon snatched the keys to the stolen Highlander out of Jeremey's hands, opening the door with the keyless remote. "Enough waiting around Gilbert-Start the engines-" Damon tossed the keys back to Jeremy who caught them and climbed inside the driver's seat of the SUV.

Matt Donovan moved over the grass with Caroline, opening the back door of the SUV for her, and a moment later she climbed into the passenger cabin. Bonnie walked slowly over grass and stood by Jeremy Gilbert, who Dean and Sam could only guess was his girlfriend, judging by how she drew herself close to him watching them with her dark eyes.

Katherine walked quickly behind like she didn't trust any of them not to leave her; but not before one last glance over at Sam. "You'll never be a regret, Agent Jennings."

Sam watched her go wordlessly. So did Stefan before he approached Sam and Dean, standing in the middle stare at them both in the predawn, the suture lines on his skin were visible like Frankenstein's monster, his light brown eyes blood shot, but piercing. "Elena's right- you kept you promise-"

Sam took the hand Stefan offered, the grasp was strong. He reached out and gripped the vampire on the back of the shoulder.

Dean gripped Stefan's hand next, Stefan's grip stronger than it had felt in many hours, and so was Dean's.

Damon's faze gaze to encompass Dean and Sam as a singular unit. "Guess I owe you my life-"And my brothers" there was another glance in Stefan's directions. Damon turned his body around completely, before he held out his hand, a gesture that didn't seem like was one he'd done a lot because of the look attached to it.

"So, thank you-"

Dean eyed the gesture for a long moment before reached out to close his hand around Damon's, the bulky ring that matched his brother's cold against Dean's palm.

"-Don't think that this means I won't rip your throat out if we cross paths in a bad way again," Damon stated this like it was a history fact. "You turned me back on to human blood after all-"

"Don't think that if that happens, we won't stop you." Dean returned, moving his eyes back up to Sam. "But I don't take pleasure in killing anyone I sloughed through trenches with, vamp or not. So maybe you should think about that before you find your next '_bad way' _moment."

Damon's look turned on Dean like it a threat, before it turned again, like a changeling, into one that gave. He released Dean's hand slowly and walked back over the grass.

The fire still burned brightly in the clearing that only held Stefan and Damon at one end, and Sam and Dean at the other. The sky had lightened to the shade of blue gray silk, the wind slowed to a trickled warmth.

The moments of silence lapsed and swirled over themselves as they were thrown and lost like the dandelion fluff that blew upwards from the wisps that curled them away.

Stefan's look became the slightest of a nod, shifting his look away from Sam and Dean to his own brother before moving in a slow turn to the SUV with the others. Damon dropped his own look only two seconds later before retreating after him.

There came one last look cast over both Damon and Stefan's shoulders at Dean and Sam who watched them back in the gray morning.

**xxxxxxXxxxxx**

**THE END**

I wrote this because I couldn't find a crossover fic that didn't try to make one show's world seem idiotic, or overly impressive versus the other show, which is a stupid premise for a fic to me.

I did my best to incorporate both the "Vampire Diaries" and "Supernatural" worlds evenly. Though at times it would slant more into the other world because it was the way the story drove itself as I wrote and if I tried to force it any way else, I wouldn't _have _my story, and I don't regret it.

Thanks again for reading.

~Mystic


End file.
